In the Heart of a Fool

When Mortimer Sands came down town Saturday morning, two hours before the convention met, he found the courthouse yard black with prospective delegates and also he found that the Judge’s friends were in a majority in the crowd. So evident was their ascendancy that the Nesbit forces had conceded to the Judge the right to organize the convention. At eleven o’clock the crowd, merchants, clerks, professional men, working men in their Sunday clothes, delegates from the surrounding country towns, and farmers–a throng of three hundred men, began to crowd into the hot “Opera House.” So young Mr. Sands, with his finger in a book to keep his place, followed the crowd to the hall, and took his seat with the Fourth Ward delegation. Having done this he considered that his full duty to God and man had been performed. He found Nathan Perry sitting beside him and said:

“Well, Nate, here’s where Anne’s great heart breaks–I suppose?”

Nathan nodded and asked: “I presume it’s all over but the shouting.”

Morty learned from George Brotherton that as the county officers were to be renominated without opposition, and as the platform had been agreed to the day before, and as the county central committeemen had been chosen the night before at the caucuses, the convention was to be a short horse soon curried. Of course, Captain Morton as permanent chairman made a speech–with suitable eulogies to the boys who wore the blue. It was the speech the convention had heard many times before, but always enjoyed–and as he closed he asked rather grandly, “and now what is the further pleasure of the convention?”

If the motion prevailed, Judge Van Dorn would have a divided delegation from Greeley county to the judicial convention, as some of the precincts and wards were against him, though a majority of the united convention was for him. Grant Adams, swinging his iron claw, was explaining this to the convention. He was appealing passionately for the right of proportional representation; holding that the minority had rights of representation that the majority should not deny.

Judge Van Dorn, without rising, had sneered across the room in a snarling voice: “Ah, you socialist!” Once he had growled: “None of your red mouthed ranting here!” Finally, as it was evident that Grant’s remarks were interesting the workmen on the delegations, Van Dorn, still seated, called out:

“Here, you–what right have you to address this convention?”

“I am a regularly accredited delegate from South Harvey, holding the proxy–”

The Van Dorn delegates roared, “Put him out. No proxies go,” and began hooting and jeering. It was obvious that Van Dorn had the crowd with him. He let them roar at Grant, who stood quietly, demanding from time to time that the chair should restore order. Captain Morton hammered the table with his gavel, but the Van Dorn crowd continued to hoot and howl. Finally Judge Van Dorn rose and with great elaborateness of parliamentary form addressed the chair asking to be permitted to ask his friend with a proxy one question.

The two men faced each other savagely, like characters symbolizing forces in a play; complaisance and discontent. Behind Grant was the unrest and upheaval of a class coming into consciousness and tremendously dynamic, while Van Dorn stood for those who had won their fight and were static and self-satisfied. He twirled his mustache. Grant raised his steel claw as if to strike; Van Dorn spoke, and in a barking, vicious, raucous tone intended to annihilate his adversary, asked:

“Will you tell this convention in the interest of fairness, what, if any, personal and private motives you have in helping Dr. Nesbit inject a family quarrel into public matters in this county?”

A moment’s silence greeted the lawyer’s insolently framed question. Mortimer Sands saw Dr. Nesbit go white, start to rise, and sit down, and saw dawning on the face of Grant Adams the realization of what the question meant. But before he could speak the mob broke loose; hisses, cheers and the roar of partisan and opposition filled the room. Grant Adams tried to speak; but no one would hear him. He started down the aisle toward Van Dorn, his red hair flashing like a banner of wrath, menacing the Judge with the steel claw upraised. Dr. Nesbit stopped Grant. The insult had been so covert, so cowardly, that only in resenting its implication would there be scandal.

Mortimer Sands closed his book. He saw Judge Van Dorn laugh, and heard him say to George Brotherton who sat beside young Sands:

“I plugged that damn pie-face!”

The crowd gradually grew calm. There being no further discussion, Captain Morton put the motion of Joseph Calvin to let the majority of the convention name all delegates to the superior conventions. The roar of ayes overwhelmed the blat of noes. It was clear that the Calvin motion had carried. The Doctor was defeated. But before the chair announced the vote the pompadour of the little man rose quickly as he stood in the middle aisle and asked in his piping treble for a vote by wards and precincts.

In the moment of silence that followed the Doctor’s suggestion, Nathan Perry’s face, which gradually had been growing stony and hard, cracked in a mean smile as he leaned over to Morty and whispered:

“Morty, can you stand for that–that damned hound’s snap at Laura Van? By grabby I can’t–I won’t!”

“Well, let’s raise hell, Nate–I’m with you. I owe him nothing,” said the guileless and amiable Morty.

Judge Van Dorn rose grandly and with great elegance of diction agreed with the Doctor’s “excellent suggestion.” So tickets were passed about containing the words yes and no, and hats were passed down delegation lines and the delegates put the ballots in the hats and the chairmen of delegations appointed tellers and so the ballots were counted. When the Fourth ward balloting was finished, Judge Van Dorn looked puzzled. He was three votes short of unanimity. His vanity was pricked. He believed he had a solid delegation and proposed to have it. When in the roll call the Fourth ward delegation was reached (it was the fourth precinct on the secretary’s roll) the Judge, as chairman of the Fourth warders, rose, blandly and complacently, and announced: “Ward Four casts twenty-five votes ‘yes’ and three votes ‘no.’ I demand a poll of the delegation.”

George Brotherton rose when the clerk of the convention called the roll and voted a weak, husky ‘no’ and sat down sheepishly under the Judge’s glare.

Then pandemonium broke loose. The convention was bedlam. The friends of the Judge were confounded. They did not know what it meant.

The clerk called Nathan Perry.

“No,” he cried as he looked maliciously into the Judge’s beady eyes.

Then there was no doubt. For the relations of Wright & Perry were so close to Daniel Sands that no one could mistake the meaning of young Perry’s vote, and then had not the whole town read of the “showers” for Anne Sands? Those who opposed the Judge were whispering that the old spider had turned against the Judge. Men who were under obligations to the Traders’ Bank were puzzled but not in doubt. There was a general buzzing among the delegations. The desertion of Mortimer Sands and Nathan Perry was one of those wholly unexpected events that sometimes make panics in politics. The Judge could see that in one or two cases delegations were balloting again. “Fifth ward,” called the clerk.

“Fifth ward not ready,” replied the chairman.

“Hancock township, Soldier precinct,” called the clerk.

“Soldier precinct not ready,” answered the chairman.

The next precinct cast its vote No, and the next precinct cast its vote 7 yes and 10 no and a poll was demanded and the vote was a tie. The power of the name of Sands in Greeley county was working like a yeast.

“Well, boys,” whispered Mr. Brotherton to Morty as two townships were passed while they were reballoting, “Well, boys–you sure have played hell.” He was mopping his red brow, and to a look of inquiry from Morty Mr. Brotherton explained: “You’ve beaten the Judge. They all think that it’s your father’s idea to knife him, and the foremen of the mines who are running these county delegations and the South Harvey contingent are changing their votes–that’s how!”

“Vote–vote, vote,” they cried. The Fourth ward balloted again and the vote stood “Yes, fifteen, no, twelve,” and the proud face of the suave Judge Van Dorn turned white with rage, and the red scar flickered like lightning across his forehead. The voting could not proceed. For men were running about the room, and Joseph Calvin was hovering over the South Harvey delegation like a buzzard. Morty Sands suspected Calvin’s mission. The young man rose and ran to Dr. Nesbit and whispered: “Doctor, Nate’s got seven hundred dollars in the bank–see what Calvin is doing? I can get it up here in three minutes. Can you use it to help?”

The Doctor ran his hand over his graying pompadour and smiled and shook his head. In the din he leaned over and piped. “Touch not, taste not, handle not, Morty–I’ve sworn off. Teetotler,” he laughed excitedly. Young Sands saw a bill flash in Mr. Calvin’s hands and disappear in Dick Bowman’s pockets.

“No law against it,” chirped the Doctor, “except God Almighty’s, and He has no jurisdiction in Judge Tom’s district.”

As they stood watching Calvin peddle his bills the convention saw what he was doing. A fear seized the decent men in the convention that all who voted for Van Dorn would be suspected of receiving bribes. The balloting proceeded. In five minutes the roll call was finished. Then before the result was announced George Brotherton was on his feet saying, “The Fourth ward desires to change her vote,” and while Brotherton was announcing the complete desertion of the Fourth ward delegation, Judge Van Dorn left the hall. Men in mob are cruel and mad, and the pack howled at the vain man as he slunk through the crowd to the door.

Nathan Perry folded the note, and as he put it in his vest pocket he felt the proud beat of his heart. Fifteen minutes later when the convention adjourned for noon, Nathan and Morty Sands ran plumb into Thomas Van Dorn, sitting in the back room of the bank, wet eyed and blubbering. The Judge was slumped over the big, shining table, his jaws trembling, his hands fumbling the ink stands and paper weights. His eyes were staring and nervous, and beside him a whiskey bottle and glass told their story. The man rose, holding the table, and shrieked:

“You damned little fice dog, you–” this to Morty, “you–you–” Morty dashed around the table toward the Judge, but before he could reach the man to strike, the Judge was moving his jaws impotently, and grasping the thin air. His mouth foamed as he fell and he lay, a shivering, white-eyed horror, upon the floor. The bank clerks lifted the figure to a leather couch, and some one summoned Doctor Nesbit.

The Doctor saw the whiskey bottle half emptied and saw the white faced, prostrate figure. The Doctor sent the clerks from the room as he worked with the unconscious man, and piped to Morty as he worked, “Nothing serious–heat–temper, whiskey–and vanity and vexation of spirit; ‘vanity of vanities–all is vanity–saith the preacher.’” Morty and Nathan left the room as the man’s eyes opened and the Doctor with a woman’s tenderness brought the wretched, broken, shattered bundle of pride back to consciousness.

For years this became George Brotherton’s favorite story. He first told it to Henry Fenn thus:

“Well, say–” and here Mr. Brotherton let out his laugh that came down like the cataract at Ladore, “pretty soon Morty sails in fresh as a daisy and asks:

“‘Father been in here?’

“‘Check one father,’ says I.

“‘Raising hell?’ he asks.

“‘Check one hell,’ says I.

“‘Well, sir,’ says he, ‘I’m exceedingly sorry.’

“‘One sorrow check,’ says I.

“‘Sincerely and truly sorry, George,’ he repeats and ‘Two sorrows check,’ I repeats and he goes on: ‘Look here, George, I know father, and until I can get the truth into him, which won’t be for a week or two, I suppose he may try to ruin you!’

“‘Check one interesting ruin,’ says I.

“But he brought down his hand on the new case till I shuddered for the glass, and well, say–what do you think that boy done? He pulls out a roll of money big enough to choke a cow and puts it on the case and says: ‘I sold my launch and drew every dollar I had out of the bank before father got home. Here, take it; you may need it in your business until father calms down.’

It cost Daniel Sands five thousand dollars in hard earned money, not that he earned the money, but it was hard-earned nevertheless, to undo the work of that convention, and nominate and elect Thomas Van Dorn district Judge upon an independent ticket. And even when the work was done, the emptiness of the honor did not convince the Judge that this is not a material world. He hugged the empty honor to his heart and made a vast pretense that it was real.

Here and now this story must pause for a moment. It has come far from the sunshine and prairie grass where it started. Tall elm trees have grown from the saplings that were stuck in the sod thirty years before, and they limit the vision. No longer can one see over the town across the roofs of Market Street into the prairie. No longer even can one see from Harvey the painted sky at night that marks South Harvey and the industrial towns of the Wahoo Valley. Harvey is shut in; we all are sometimes by our comforts. The dreams of the pioneers that haloed the heads of those who came to Harvey in those first days–those dreams are gone. Here and there one is trapped in brick or wood or stone or iron; and another glows in a child or walks the weary ways of man as a custom or an institution or as a law that brought only a part of the blessings which it promised.

And the equality of opportunity for which these pioneers crossed the Mississippi and came into the prairie uplands of the West–where is that evanescent spirit? Certainly it touched Daniel Sands’s shoulder and he followed it; it beckoned Dr. Nesbit and he followed it a part of the journey. Surely Kyle Perry saw it for years, and Captain Morton was destined to find it, gorgeous and iridescent. Amos Adams might have had it for the asking, but he sought it only for others. It never came to Dooley and Hogan, and Williams and Bowman and those who went into the Valley. Did it die, one may ask; or did it vanish like a prairie stream under the sand to flow on subterranean and appear again strong, purified and refreshed, a powerful current to carry mankind forward? The world that was in the flux of dreams that day when Harvey began, had hardened to reality thirty years after. Men were going their appointed ways working out in circumstances the equation of their life’s philosophy.

When he is not bowing and smiling, a sneer is on his face. And when he speaks to the horse his voice is harsh and mean. He holds an unlighted cigar in his mouth as a terrier might hold a loathed rat; working the muscles of his lips at times viciously but saying nothing. The soft, black hat of his youthful days is replaced by a high, stiff, squarely sawed felt hat which he imagines gives him great dignity. His clothes have become so painfully scrupulous in their exact conformation to the mode that he looks wooden. He has given so much thought to the subject of “wherewithal shall ye be clothed,” that the thought in some queer spiritual curdling has appeared in the unyielding texture of his artificial tailored skin, that seems to be a part of another consciousness than his own.

Moreover, those first days he spent after the convention have chipped the suavity from his countenance, and have written upon the bland, complacent face all the cynicism of his nature. Triumph makes cynicism arrogant, so the man is losing his mask. His nature is leering out of his eyes, snarling out of his mouth, and where the little, lean lines have pared away the flesh from his nose, a greedy, self-seeking pride is peering from behind a great masterful nose. Thomas Van Dorn should be in the adolescence of maturity; but he is in the old age of adolescence. His skin has no longer the soft olive texture of youth; it is brown and mottled and leathery. His lips–his lips once full and red, are pursing and leadening.

“Oh, you are?” echoes the woman.

“Yes, I am,” replies the man sharply.

The woman is walking up the wide parking, with the dog. She makes no reply. The man looks at her a second or two, and drives away, cutting the horse to a mad speed as he rounds the corner.

Through the wide doors into the broad hall, up the grand staircase, through the luxurious rooms goes the high Priestess of the Temple of Love. It is a lonely house. For it is still in a state of social siege. So far as Harvey is concerned, no one has entered it. So they live rather quiet lives.

On that May evening the mistress of the great house sits in her bed room by the mild electric, trying book after book, and putting each down in disgust. Philosophy fails to hold her attention–poetry annoys her; fiction–the book of the moment, which happened to be “The Damnation of Theron Ware,” makes her wince, and so she reaches under the reading stand, and brings out from the bottom of a pile of magazines a salacious novel filled with stories of illicit amours. This she reads until her cheeks burn and her lips grow dry and she hears the roll of a buggy down the street, and knows that it must be nearly midnight and that her mate is coming. She slips the book back into its place of concealment, picks up “The Harmonious Universe,” and walks with some show of grandeur in her trailing garments down the stairs to greet her lord.

“You up?” he asks. He glances at the book and continues: “Reading that damn trash? Why don’t you read Browning or Thackeray or–if you want philosophy Emerson or Carlyle? That’s rot.”

He puts what scorn he can into the word rot, and in her sweetest, falsest, baby voice the woman answers:

“My soul craves communion with the infinite and would seek the deeper harmonies. I just love to wander the wide wastes between the worlds like I’ve been doing to-night.”

Is the thing called love worth having at the cost of character? The trouble with the poets is that they take their ladies and gentlemen of pliable virtue and uncertain rectitude, only to the altar. One may ask with some degree of propriety if the duplicity they practiced, the lying they did and justified by the sacredness of their passion, the crimes they committed and the meannesses they went through to attain their ends were after all worth while. Also one may ask if the characters they made–or perhaps only revealed, were not such as to make them wholly miserable when they began to “live happily ever after”? A symposium entitled “Is Love Really Worth It?” by such distinguished characters as Helen of Troy, Mrs. Potiphar and Cleopatra, might be improving reading, if the ladies were capable of telling the truth after lives of dissimulation and deceit.

But let us leave philosophy and look at another picture. This time we have the Morton family.

The Captain’s feet are upon the shining fender. There is no fire in the stove. It is May. But it is the Captain’s habit to warm his feet there when he is in the house at night, and he never fails to put them upon the fender and go through his evening routine. First it is his paper; then it is his feet; then it is his apple, and finally a formal discussion of what they will have for breakfast, with the Captain always voting for hash, and declaring that there are potatoes enough left over and meat enough unused to make hash enough for a regiment. But before he gets to the hash question, the Captain this evening leads off with this:

Champing his apple the Captain gesticulates slowly with his open pocket knife, “Love”–he reflects; then backs away from his discussion and begins anew: “Less take–say Anne and Nate, a happy couple–him a lean, eagle-beaked New England kind of a man; her–a little quick-gaited, big-eyed woman and sping! out of the Providence of Goddlemighty comes a streak of some kind of creepy, fuzzy lightning and they’re struck dumb and blind and plumb crazy–eh?”

He champs for a time on the apple, “Eighteen sixty-one–May, sixty-one–me a tidy looking young buck–girl–beautiful girl with reddish brown hair and bluest eyes in the world. Sping! comes the lightning, and melts us together and the whole universe goes pink and rose-colored. No sense–neither of us–no more’n Anne and Nate, just one idea. I can’t think of nothing but her–war isn’t much; shackles on four millions slaves–no consequence; the Colonel caught us kissing in his tent the day I left for the army; union forever–mere circumstance in the lives of two crazy people–in a world mostly eyes and lips and soft hands and whispers and flowers, eh–and–” The Captain does not finish his sentence.

The wheels of the Judge’s buggy grate upon the curbing nearby and the Captain remarks: “Judge Tom gets in a little later every night now. I heard him dump her in at eight, and here it is nearly eleven–pretty careless,–pretty careless; he oughtn’t to be getting in this late for four or five years yet–what say?” Public opinion again is divided. Fashion and the fine arts hold that it is Margaret’s fault and that she is growing to be too much of a poseur; but the schools, which are the bulwarks of our liberties, maintain that he is just as bad as she. And what is more to the point–such is the contention of the eldest Miss Morton of the fourth grade in the Lincoln school, he has driven around to the school twice this spring to take little Lila out riding, and even though her mother has told the teachers to let the child go if she cared to, the little girl would not go and he was mean to the principal and insolent, though Heaven knows it is not the principal’s fault, and if the janitor hadn’t been standing right there–but it really makes little difference what would have happened; for the janitor in every school building, as every one knows, is a fierce and awesome creature who keeps more dreadful things from happening that never would have happened than any other single agency in the world.

The point which the eldest Miss Morton was accenting was this, that he should have thought of Lila before he got his divorce.

And now we come to the last picture.

It is still an evening in May!

“Well, how is the missionary to South Harvey,” chirrups the Doctor as he mounts the steps, and sees his daughter, waiting for him on the veranda. She looks cool and fresh and beautiful. Her eyes and her skin glow with health and her face beams upon him out of a soul at peace.

“She’s all right,” returns the daughter, smiling. “How’s the khedive of Greeley county?”

As the Doctor mounts the steps she continues: “Sit down, father–I’ve something on my mind.” To her father’s inquiring face she replied, “It’s Lila. Her father has been after her again. She just came home crying as though her little heart would break. It’s so pitiful–she loves him; that is left over from her babyhood; but she is learning someway–perhaps from the children, perhaps from life–what he has done–and when he tries to attract her–she shrinks away from him.”

“Father,” she says with her eyes brimming, “I’m not angry with Tom–only sorry. He hasn’t hurt me–much–when it’s all figured out. I still have my faith–my faith in folks–and in God! Really to take away one’s faith is the only wrong one can do to another!”

The father says, “The chief wrong he did you was when he married you. It was nobody’s fault; I might have stopped it–but no man can be sure of those things. It was just one of the inevitable mistakes of youth, my dear, that come into our lives, one way or another. They fall upon the just and the unjust–without any reference to deserts.”

She nods her assent and they sit listening to the sounds of the closing day–to the vesper bell in the Valley, to the hum of the trolley bringing its homecomers up from the town; to the drone of the five o’clock whistles in South Harvey, to the rattle of homebound buggies. Twice the daughter starts to speak. The second time she stops the Doctor pipes up, “Let it come–out with it–tell your daddy if anything is on your mind.” She smiles up into his mobile face, to find only sympathy there. So she speaks, but she speaks hesitatingly.

She looks wistfully into her father’s face. “Father, you won’t quite understand me when I tell you that the tomato cans with their geraniums behind those gray lace curtains, that make Harvey people smile, are really not tomato cans at all. They are social dynamite bombs that one day will blow into splinters and rubbish the injustices, the cruel injustices of life that the poor suffer at the hands of their exploiters. The geranium is the flower, the spring flower of the divine discontent, which some day shall bear great and wonderful fruit.”

“Rather a swift pace you’re setting for a fat man, Laura,” pipes the Doctor, adding earnestly: “There you go talking like Grant Adams! Don’t let Grant Adams fool you, child: the end of the world isn’t here. Grant’s a good boy, Laura, and I like him; but he’s getting a kind of Millerite notion that we’re about to put on white robes and go straight up to glory, politically and socially and every which way, in a few years, and there’s nothing to it. Grant’s a good son, and a good brother, and a good friend and neighbor, but”–the Doctor pounds his chair arm vehemently, “there are bats, my dear, bats in his belfry just the same. Don’t get excited when you see Grant mount his haystack to jump into the crack o’ doom for the established order!”

The daughter smiles at him, but she answers:

And now we must put aside the pictures and get on with the story.

The most dramatic agency in life is time–time that escapes the staged drama. The passing years, the ceaseless chiselling of continuous events upon a soul, the reaction of a creed upon the material routine of the days, the humdrum living through of life that brings to it its final color and form–these things shape us and guide us, make us what we are, and alas, the story and the stage may only mention them. It is all very fine to say that as the years of work and aspiration passed, Grant Adams’s channel of life grew narrower. But what does that tell? Does it tell of the slow, daily sculpturing upon his character of the three big, emotional episodes of his life? To be a father in boyhood, a father ashamed, yet in duty bound to love and cherish his child; to face death in youth horribly and escape only when other men’s courage save him; to react upon that experience in a great spiritual awakening that all but touched madness; and to face unspeakable pain and terror and possible death to justify one’s fanatic consecration. Then day by day to renounce ambition, to feel no desire for those deeper things of the heart that gather about a home and the joys of a home; to be atrophied where others are quick and to be supersensitive and highstrung where others are dull; these are facts of Grant Adams’s life, but the greater facts are hidden; for they pass under the slow and inexorably moving current of life. They are that part of the living through of life that may not be staged nor told.

We may only see the face: here and there on it is the mark of the sculptor’s tool: now and then a glare or a smile reveals what deep creases and gashes the winds of the passing years have made in the soul behind the mask. Here and there, as a rising strident voice in passionate exhortation lifts, we may hear the roar of the narrowing channel into which his life is rushed with augmented force as he hurries forward into his destiny. In that tumult, family, home, ambition, his very child itself that was his first deep wellspring of love, are slipping from him into the torrent. The flood washes about him; his one idea dominates him. He is restless under it–restless even with the employment of the hour. The unions, for which he has been working for more than half a decade, do not satisfy him. His aim is perfection and mortality irritates him, but does not discourage him. For even vanity is slipping from him in the erosion of the waters rushing down their narrowing groove.

But it is only his grim flint face we see; only his high strident, but often melodiously sympathetic voice we hear; only his wiry, lank body with its stump of a right arm that stands before us. The minutes–awful minutes some of them–the hours, painful wrestling hours, the days, doubt-ridden days, and the long monotonous story of the years, we may not know. For the living through of life still escapes us, and only life’s tableau of the moment is before us.

“Why,” he asked, “should labor bear the burden of industry and take its leavings?”

“Why,” he demanded, “should capital toil not nor spin and be clothed as Solomon in his glory?”

“Why,” he argued, “should the profits of toil be used to buy more tools for toil and not more comforts for toil?”

“Why, why–” he challenged Market Street, “is the partnership of society, not a partnership, but a conspiracy?”

Now Market Street had long been wrathful at that persistent Why.

But when it became known that John Dexter had invited Grant Adams to occupy the pulpit of the Congregational Church one Sunday evening to state his case, Market Street’s wrath choked it. For several years John Dexter had been preaching sermons that made the choir the only possible theme of conversation between him and Ahab Wright. John Dexter had been crucified a thousand times by the sordid greed of man in Harvey, and had cried out in the wilderness of his pulpit against it; but his cries fell upon deaf ears, or in dumb hearts.

To what a judgment seat they summoned John Dexter! First, up spake Commerce. “Dr. Dexter,” said Commerce–Commerce always referred to John Dexter as Doctor, though no Doctor was he and he knew it well, “Dr. Dexter, we feel that your encouragement–hum–uhm–well, your patronage of this man Adams, in his–well, shall we say incendiary–” a harsh word is incendiary, so Commerce stopped and touched its graying side whiskers reverently and patted its immaculate white necktie, and then went on: “–well perhaps indiscreet will do!” With Commerce indeed there is no vast difference between the indiscreet and the incendiary. “–indiscreet agitation against the–well–uhm–the way we have to conduct business, is–is regrettable,–at least regrettable!”

“Why?” interrupted John Dexter sharply, throwing Commerce sadly out of balance. But the Law, which is the palladium of our liberties, answered for Commerce in a slow snarling, “because he is preaching discontent.”

“But Mr. Calvin,” returned John Dexter quickly, “if any one would come to town preaching discontent to Wright & Perry, showing them how to make more money, to enlarge their profits, to rise among their fellow merchants–would you refuse to give him audience in a pulpit?” The Law did not deign to answer the preacher and then Industry took heart to say, pulling its military goatee vigorously, and clearing its dear old throat for a passage at arms: “’Y gory man, there’s always been a working class and they’ve always had to work like sixty and get the worst of it, I guess, and they always will–what say? You can’t improve on the way the world is made. And when she’s made, she’s made–what say? I tell you now, you’re wasting your time on that class of people.”

“Yes–and you know what happened to Him,” sneered the Courts, which are the keystones of government in the structure of civilization. “And,” continued the Courts, in a grand and superior voice, “you can’t drag business into religion, sir. Religion is one thing and I respect it,”–titters from the listening angels, “–and business is another thing, and we think, sir, that you are trying to mix the insoluble, and as business men who have our own deep religious convictions–” inaudible guffaws from the angels, “–we feel the sacrilege of asking this blatherskite Adams to speak on any subject in so sacred a place as our consecrated pulpit, sir.” Hoarse hoots from the angels.

No soft benignity beamed in the preacher’s face as he turned to the Courts. “My pulpit, Judge,” answered John Dexter sternly, “first of all stands for the gospel of Justice between man and man. It will afford sanctuary for the thief and the Magdalene, but only the penitent thief and the weeping Magdalene!” And John Dexter brought down a resounding fist on the table before him. “I believe that the first duty of religion is to preach shame on the wicked, that they may quit their wickedness, and if,” John Dexter’s voice rose as he went on, “in the light of our widening intelligence we see that employers are organized wickedly to rob their workers of justice in one way or another, I stand with those who would make the thief disgorge for his own soul’s sake, incidentally, but chiefly that justice may come into an evil world and men may not mock the mercy and goodness of God by pointing at the evil men do unrebuked in His name, and under His servants’ noses. My pulpit is a free pulpit, sir. When it is not that, I shall leave it. And even though I do not agree sometimes with a man’s message, so long as my pulpit is free, any man who desires to cry stop thief, in the darkness of this world, may lift his voice there, and no man shall say him nay! Have you gentlemen anything further to offer?”

“So you are going to muzzle John Dexter, are you–you witch-burning old pharisees. I heard of your meeting, and I just thought I’d come around to the bonfire! What are you trying to do here, anyway?”

At last Business which had been whistling for the station was ready to pull in; so it unloaded itself thus: “We are p-protesting, Doc, at th-th-th-th m-m-m-man Adams–this l-l-labor sk-sk-skate and s-s-socialist occupying J-J-John Dexter’s p-pulp-p-pit!”

But the honest indignation of Market Street that an agitator should appear in a pulpit–that an agitator for anything, should appear in any pulpit–waxed strong. For it was assumed that religion had nothing to do with social conduct; religion was solely a matter of individual salvation. Religion was a matter concerned entirely with getting to heaven oneself, and not at all a matter of getting others to heaven except as they took the narrow and individual path. The idea that environment affects character and that society through politics and social and economic institutions may change a man’s environments and thus affect the characters and the chances for Heaven of whole sections of the population, was an idea which had not been absorbed by Market Street in Harvey. So Market Street raged.

That evening when Grant Adams returned from work he received two significant notes. One was from John Dexter and ran:

“Dear Grant: Fearing that you may hear of the comment my invitation to you to speak in my pulpit is causing and fearing that you may either decide at the last minute not to come or that you will modify your remarks out of consideration for me, I write to say that while of course I may not agree with everything you advocate, yet my pulpit is a free pulpit and I cannot consent that you restrict its freedom in saying your full say as a man, any more than I could consent to have my own freedom restricted. Yours in the faith–J. D.”

The other note ran: “Father says to tell you to tone it down. I have delivered his message. I say here is your chance to get the truth where it is most needed, and even if for the most part it falls on stony ground–you still must sow it.–L. N. VD.”

Sunday evening saw a large congregation in the pews of the Rev. John Dexter’s church. In the front and middle portion of the church were the dwellers on the Hill, those whose lines fell in pleasant places. They were the “Haves” of the town,–conspicuous and highly respectable with rustle of silks and flutter of ribbons.

“I suppose,” he began slowly, “every man has his job in the world, and I presume my job seems rather an unnecessary one to some of my friends, and I can hardly blame them. For the assumption of superiority that it may seem to require upon the whole must be distasteful to them. For as a professional apostle of discontent, urging men to cease the worship of things as they are, I am taking on myself a grave burden–that of leading those who come with me, into something better. In the end perhaps, you will not be proud of me. For my vision may be a delusion. Time may leave me naked to the cold truth of life, and I may awaken from my dreaming to reality. That is possible. But now I see my course; now I feel the deep call of a duty I cannot resist.” He was speaking softly and in hardly more than a conversational tone, with his hand at his side and his gloved claw behind him. He lifted his hand and spoke in a deeper tone.

As he spoke something within him, some power of his voice or of his presence played across the congregation like a wind. The wind which at first touched a few who bent forward to hear him, was moving every one. Faces gradually set in attention. He went on:

“How wonderful is this spirit of life that has come rolling in through the eons, rolling in from some vast illimitable sea of life that we call God. For ages and ages on this planet life could only give to new life the power to feed and propagate, could only pass on to new life the heritage of instinct; then another impulse of the outer sea washed in and there came a day when life could imitate, could learn a little, could pass on to new life some slight power of growth. And then came welling in from the unknown bourne another wave, and lo! life could reason, and God heard men whisper, Father, and deep called unto deep. Since then through the long centuries, through the gray ages, life slowly has been rising, slowly coming in from the hidden sea that laves the world. Millions and millions of men are doomed to know nothing of this life that gives us joy; millions are held bound in a social inheritance that keeps them struggling for food, over outworn paths, mere creatures of primal instinct, whose Godhood is taken from them at birth; by you–by you who get what you do not earn from those who earn what they do not get.”

He turned to the group near the rear of the room, looked at them and continued:

“The poor need your neighborly sacrifice, and in that neighborly love and sacrifice you will grow in stature more than they. What you give you will keep; what you lose you will gain. The brotherhood you build up will bless and comfort you.

The wraith of smoke that had appeared when Grant first began speaking personally to the men of Harvey, in a minute had grown to a surer evidence of fire. The smiling ceased. Angry looks began flashing over the faces before Grant, like darts of flame. And after these looks came a great black cloud of wrath that was as perceptible as a gust of smoke. He felt that soon the fire would burst forth. But he hurried on with his message: “Poverty is not the social punishment of the weak, I repeat it. Poverty is a social inheritance of the many, a condition which holds men hard and fast–a condition that you may change, you who have so much. All this coal and oil and mineral have profited you greatly, oh, men of Harvey. You are rich, Daniel Sands. You are prosperous, Ahab Wright. You have every comfort around you and yours, John Kollander, and you, Joseph Calvin, are rearing your children in luxury compared with Dick Bowman’s children. Hasn’t he worked as hard as you? Here are Ira Dooley and Denny Hogan. They started as equals with you up here and have worked as hard and have lived average lives. Yet if their share is a fair share of the earnings of this community, you have an unfair share. How did you get it?” He leaned out over the chancel rail, pointed a bony, accusing finger at the congregation and glared at the eyes before him angrily. Quickly he recovered his poise but brought his steel claw down on the pulpit beside him with a sharp clash as he cried again, “How did you get it?”

Then it was that the flame of indignation burst forth. It came first in a hiss and another and a third–then a crackling fire of hisses greeted his last sentence. When the hissing calmed, his voice rose slightly. He went on:

They tried to hiss again but he hurried on as one possessed of a demon: “A little love, a little sacrifice, a little practical brotherly care from each of you each day would help. We don’t want your alms, we want justice. Thousands of babies–loved just as yours are loved–are slaughtered every month through poisoned food that comes from commercial greed. Thousands of fathers and brothers over this land are killed every year because it is cheaper to kill them than to protect them by machinery guarded and watched. Their blood is upon you–for by your laws, by your middle class courts you could stop its flowing. Thousands of mothers die every week from poor housing–you could stop that if you would. They are stopping it by laws in other lands. Millions of girls the world over are led like sheep to shameful lives because of industrial conditions that your vote and voice could change; and yet,” his voice lost its accusing tone and he spoke gently, even tenderly, “as babies they cuddled in their mothers’ arms and roused all the hope and inspired all the love that a soft little body may bring. Millions and millions of mothers who clasp their children to them in hope, must see those children go into life to be broken and crushed by the weight from above.”