John Marvel, Assistant

"DOCTOR CAIAPHAS"

It was the duty of the street-car company under their charter to run through cars every day or forfeit their charter—a wise provision, doubtless; but one which did not contemplate that Coll McSheen who was trying to destroy the company should have control of the police on whose protection the ability to carry out the charter depended.

Under the compulsion of this requirement to run through cars, the management of the street-car line, after much trouble, secured a few men who, for a large price, agreed to operate the cars. But it was several hours after the regular time before the first car ran out of the shed. It made its way for some distance without encountering any difficulty or even attracting any attention beyond a few comments by men and women walking along the streets or standing in their doors. A little further along there were a few jeers, but presently it turned a corner and reached a point in a street where a number of boys were playing, as usual, and a number of men out of work were standing about smoking their pipes and discussing with some acrimony the action of the meeting which had called the strike, and with some foreboding the future. As the car stopped for a moment to take on a woman who had been waiting, a number of the boys playing in the street began to jeer and hoot the motorman, who was evidently somewhat unaccustomed to handling his car, and when he attempted to loosen his brake, and showed therein his unskilfulness, jeers turned into taunts, and the next moment a few handfuls of rubbish picked up in a gutter were flung at him. In a twinkling, as if by magic the street filled, and vegetables taken from in front of a neighboring shop, mingled with a few stones, began to rattle against the car, smashing the windows with much noise. The rattling glass quickly attracted attention. It was like a bugle call, and in a minute more the road was blocked and a dozen youths sprang upon the car and a fierce fight ensued between them and the motorman and conductor, both of whom were soundly beaten and might have been killed but for their promise to give up their job and the somewhat tardy arrival of the police who had been promised, but had appeared on the scene only after the riot had taken place. This collision, which was begun by a lot of irresponsible boys, was described under glaring headlines in all of the afternoon papers as a riot of vast dimension. The effect of the riot, great or small, was instantaneous and far-reaching throughout the entire section. That evening the entire population of that section had changed from an attitude of reasonable neutrality to one of unequivocal hostility. It was a psychological moment. The spark had been dropped in the powder. Next day it was as if war had been declared. There were no neutrals. All had taken sides.

Before many days were out the strike had progressed so far that, instead of its being a small body of men engaged in cessation of work, with pacific methods of attempting to dissuade others who wished to continue their work from doing so, or, by some more positive form of argument known as picketing, of preventing newcomers from taking the places of those who had struck, it had developed into an active force whose frank object was to render it impossible for any man to take or hold a position as an employee of the railway company. It was not so much that meetings were frequently held and the measures advocated constantly grew more and more violent, nor that occasional outbreaks occurred, as that the whole temper of the people was becoming inflamed, and the conditions of life affected thereby were becoming almost intolerable. The call of the company on the mayor, as the representative of the public, to grant them protection, was promptly, if somewhat evasively, replied to. No man knew better than Coll McSheen how to express himself so that he might be understood differently by different men. It had been one of his strong cards in climbing to the altitude which he had reached. But the idea that the police would render efficient aid to the company was openly and generally scoffed at in the quarters where the strike prevailed. It was boldly declared that the police were in sympathy with the strikers. This report appeared to have some foundation, when one cold night, with the thermometer at zero, a fire broke out in the mills owned by Mr. Leigh's company, and they were gutted from foundation to roof. It was charged on the strikers; but an investigation showed that this charge, like many others, was unfounded; at least, as it alleged a direct and intentional act. The evidence proved conclusively to my mind that the fire, while of incendiary origin, was started by a gang of reckless and dissolute youths who had no relation whatever to the strikers, but whose purpose was to exhibit their enmity against a company which was held in such disfavor generally. This was the contention of Wolffert in his papers on the incident, and the view which Mr. Leigh afterward adopted.

It was only an expression of the general feeling that had grown up in the city under the influence of the strike—one of the baleful offspring of the condition which McSheen and Wringman and their like had been able to produce from the conflict which they had projected and fostered. The wretched youths who were arrested, told under the sweating process a series of wholly conflicting and incredible lies, and in time two of them were convicted on their own confessions and sent to the State prison, and the strikers who had not yet resorted to extreme measures of violence got the credit of the crime.

The continued spread of the strike and of sympathy with it had already reached large proportions. The losses to business and to business men and the inconvenience to even the well-to-do classes were immense and when calculated in figures were quite staggering. The winter had set in with sudden severity. The suffering among the poor was incalculable. There was not a house or shop in the poorer districts where the pinch of poverty was not beginning to be felt. The wolf, which ever stands beside the door of the poor, had long since entered and cleaned out many of the small dwellings which the summer before had been the abode of hope and of reasonable content. Only the human wolves who prey on misfortune battened and fattened; the stock-brokers who organized raids on "the market," the usurers who robbed the poor more directly, but not more effectively, the thieves of one kind or another alone prospered. The cry of hunger increased while bitterness without and within had long since begun to be universal, so long as to be scarcely heeded throughout the poor quarters. The efforts of philanthropy, individual and organized, were exercised to the utmost, but the trouble was too vast to be more than touched on the outer fringe. The evil which Mr. Leigh had predicted had come to pass and his prophecy had been far more than verified. Many of the young women, turned from their factories, had disappeared from the places which knew them before and found their way to haunts like Mel Gallagin's "Gallery" and others less splendid, but not more wicked. Only in the sphere in which persons of extraordinary accumulation moved, like the Canters and the Argands, was there apparently no diminution in their expenditure and display. Young Canter and his comrades still flaunted their vast wealth in undisguised and irresponsible display—still gambled on the stock boards in commodities that touched the lives of pining thousands—still multiplied their horses and automobiles, and drove them recklessly through crowded streets, heedless of the pinched and scowling faces of unemployed multitudes. But older and saner heads were beginning to shake when the future was mentioned. The reefing of sails for a storm whose forerunners were on the horizon was already taking place, and every reef meant that some part of the crew which had sailed the ship so far was dropped overboard.

The devil is credited with the power to raise a tempest. Certainly tempests are raised, but sometimes even the devil cannot quiet them. Such was the case with the strike. McSheen, Wringman and Co. had been completely successful in getting the strike of the Leigh employees under way: when it started, they privately took much pride in their work. Wringman received his wage and gratified his feeling of revenge for Mr. Leigh's cool contempt of him on the occasion when he called to demand terms of him. McSheen had a score of longer standing to settle. It dated back to the time when Mr. Leigh, looking with clear and scornful eyes at his work, gave him to feel that at least one man knew him to the bottom of his scoundrelly soul. For a while it appeared as though Mr. Leigh would be irretrievably ruined and McSheen and his friends and secret backers like Canter would secure easy possession of the properties his power of organization had built up; but suddenly an unlooked-for ally with abundant resources had come to Mr. Leigh's assistance in the person of an old friend, and the ripened fruit of their labors had been plucked from their hands outstretched to grasp it. And now having raised the tempest, these gamblers could not calm it. In other words, having started a strike among Mr. Leigh's operatives for a specific purpose, it had spread like a conflagration and now threatened to destroy everything. The whole laboring population were getting into a state of ferment. Demands were made by their leaders such as had never been dreamed of before. The leaders were working them for their own purposes, and were after a temporary raise of wages. But there was a graver danger. The people were becoming trained. A new leader was coming forward, and his writings were having a profound influence. He could not be bullied, and he could not be bought, this Jew, Wolffert. He was opening the eyes of the People. Unless the thing were stopped, there would be a catastrophe which would ruin them all. This was the judgment that McSheen and Canter and Co. arrived at. And this was the conclusion that Mr. Canter, Sr., announced to his son and heir, Mr. Canter, Jr., at the close of an interview in which he had discussed his affairs with more openness than he usually employed with that audacious young operator. "The fact is," he said, "that we have failed in the object of our move. We have not got hold of Leigh's lines—and his men are returning to work while ours are just beginning to fight—and instead of getting his properties, we stand a blessed good show of losing our own. McSheen couldn't deliver the goods and there is the devil to pay. Why don't you stop your —— nonsense and settle down and marry that girl? She's the prettiest girl in town and—Well, you might go a good deal further and fare worse. There is a good property there if we don't destroy it fighting for it. If you are ever going to do it, now is the time, and we are bound to have it, if possible, to save our own."

Mr. Canter, Jr., shrugged his shoulders. "How do you know she would have me?" he asked with a sort of grin which was not altogether mirthful. He did not feel it necessary to impart to his parent the fact that he was beginning to have strong doubts himself on the subject. But Canter, Jr., was no fool.

"Well, of course, she won't, if you go spreeing around with a lot of blanked hussies. No decent woman would. But why the deuce don't you drop that business? You are getting old enough now to know better. And you can't keep hitting it up as you have been doing. There's a new system coming in in this town, and you'll get in trouble if you don't look out. You came precious near it the other night. Those young men mean business. Get rid of that woman."

Young Canter for once came near disclosing to his father the whole situation and telling him the truth. He however contented himself with his usual half-light assurance that he was all right—and that he was going to settle down. He could not bring himself to tell him that he found himself bound with a chain which he could not break, and that "that woman" would not be gotten rid of. She, in fact, threatened not only to make a terrible scandal if he attempted to leave her, but actually menaced his life.

However, he determined to act on his father's advice. He would break off from her and if he could carry through his plans he would marry and go abroad and remain until the storm had blown over and "that woman" had consoled herself with some other soft young millionaire.

Among all the people affected by the strike none suffered more, I believe, than John Marvel and Wolffert. I never saw any one more distressed by the suffering about them than these two men. Others suffered physically, they mentally, and in the reflexive way which comes from over-wrought sympathies. Where gloom and dull hate scowled from the brows of the working class, sadness and sorrow shadowed John's brow, though at need he always had a smile and a cheery word for every one. He was soon reduced to his last suit of clothes, and as the cold increased, he went about overcoatless and gloveless, walking like fury and beating his arms to keep himself from freezing, his worn overcoat and gloves having long since gone with everything else he had to help some one needier than himself. "Take a long, deep breath," he used to say, "and it will warm you up like a fire. What does a young man need with an overcoat?" What, indeed, with the thermometer at zero, and rapidly slipping still lower! "Those I grieve for are the old and the sick and the young children."

However this was, he was busier than ever—going in and out among his poor; writing letters, making calls, appealing to those able to give, and distributing what he could collect, which, indeed, was no little, for the people at large were sympathetic with suffering and generous to poverty. And his ablest assistant in the work was Wolffert, if, indeed, he was not the leader. I never knew before what one man's intellect and zeal consecrated to a work could accomplish. The great morass of poverty, wide and profound at all times, extending through the city, sapping the foundations and emitting its exhalations, became now bottomless and boundless. Into this morass Wolffert flung himself with the earnestness of a zealot. He worked day and night, organizing relief associations; looking after individual cases; writing letters to the press and picturing conditions with a vividness which began to make an impression on all sides. He counselled patience and moderation on the part of the poor, but made no secret of his sympathy with them, and where he dealt with the injustice shown them it was with a pen of flame. The conservative papers charged that his letters added fuel to the flames already blazing. It was possibly true. Certainly, the flames were spreading.

As the strike proceeded and violence increased, those evidences of sympathy which came in the form of contributions grew less, and at last they began to fail perceptibly. In the commotion the foulest dregs of the seething community were thrown up, the vilest scum rose to the top. As in the case of Mr. Leigh's fire, whatever outrages were committed were charged to the strikers. The press, which had begun with expressions of sympathy with the strikers, had, under the impending shadow, changed its tone and was now calling on the authorities to put down lawlessness with a strong hand; demanding that the police should be ordered to protect the property and lives of citizens, and calling on the mayor to bestir himself and call on the governor for aid.

In this state of the case John Marvel, wishing to see what could be done to ameliorate the conditions about him, called a meeting of his congregation at his church one evening just before Christmas, and when the time came the little chapel was crowded to suffocation. It was a sombre and depressing-looking crowd that thronged the aisles of the little building. Poverty and want were in every face. A hopeless, sullen misery sat on every brow. The people thought that somehow some good would come of it, and many who had never been inside the walls before were on hand. I went in consequence of a talk I had with Marvel, who had casually mentioned Miss Eleanor Leigh's name in connection with the first suggestion of the call. And I was rewarded, for seated back in the crowd, with her face a little more pallid than usual and her eyes filled with the light of expectancy and kindness, sat Eleanor Leigh. She was dressed with great simplicity; but her appearance was not the less attractive, at least to me. She smiled from time to time to some acquaintance in the sad-looking throng, but I had a pang of jealousy to see how her gaze followed John Marvel, and one other member of the assembly, whose presence rather surprised me, Wolffert.

After a brief service John Marvel, in a few touching and singularly apt words, explained the reason for having called them together, irrespective of their church relation, and urged that, as the blessed season which was accepted by Christendom as the time of peace on earth and good-will to all men was drawing near, they should all try to lay aside personal feeling and hates and grievances, and try what effect kindness and good-will would accomplish. He asked that all would try to help each other as formerly, and trust to the Divine and Merciful Master to right their wrongs and inspire compassion for their sufferings. He referred to the terrible development that had just been made among them—the discovery of Elsa and the other poor girl who had been found at the Snow house—to the sudden arousing of the law after years of praying and working, and with a word of compassion for the poor creatures who had been misled and enslaved, he urged patience and prayer as the means to secure God's all-powerful help in their distress. His words and manner were simple and touching, and I do not attempt to give any idea of them or of their effect. But I somehow felt as though I were hearing the very teaching of Christ. He would call on one who was their friend as they knew, the friend of all who needed a friend, to say a few words to them. He turned to Wolffert. Wolffert walked forward a few steps and turned, made a brief but powerful statement of the situation, and counselled patience and forbearance. He knew their sufferings, he said—he knew their fortitude. He knew their wrongs, but patience and fortitude would in time bring a realization of it all in the minds of the public. What was needed was to make known to the world the truth, not as changed and distorted by ignorance or evil design, but as it existed in fact. They had a more powerful weapon than bullets or bayonets, the power of truth and justice. His own people had been preserved by Jehovah through the ages by the patience and fortitude He had given them, and God's arm was not shortened that He could not save nor His ear dulled that He could not hear. He used the same illustration that John Marvel had used: the unexpected arousing of the law to defend and save poor ignorant girls, who were being dragged down to the bottomless pit by organized infamy under the protection of men who had made themselves more powerful than the law. For these he had a few scathing words. He told of John Marvel's going to find Elsa, and referred to the aid he had received from others, those connected with the railway line on which the strike existed; and he counselled them to protect themselves, obey the law, keep the peace, and await with patience the justice of God. Efforts were being made to furnish them with fuel.

It may have been Wolffert's deep, flashing eyes, his earnest manner and vibrant voice, which affected them, for, though he held himself under strong restraint, he was deeply affected himself; but when John Marvel, after a brief prayer, dismissed them with the benediction, the people, men and women, passed out in almost silence and dispersed to their homes, and their murmured talk was all in a new key of resignation and even of distant hope. I felt as though I had shaken off the trammels of selfishness that had hitherto bound me, and was getting a glimpse of what the world might become in the future. This simple follower of Christ among his poor, threadbare like them, like them fireless and hungry and poor, illustrated his master's teaching in a way which I had never seen before, and it gave me a new insight into his power. I should have liked to go up to Eleanor Leigh and make peace with her; but while I deliberated Wolffert joined her and I walked home alone and thoughtful.

The press next morning had a fairly full notice of the meeting—the first that had ever been given to the work done through the chapel and its minister. The chief notices in it were the connection of the minister with the case of Elsa Loewen and the attack on the system made by a Jew. One paper had the heading:

"JEW AND CHRISTIAN."

Another's headline ran:

"PREACHER MARVEL VISITS A BAGNIO."

And it was only below that it was made plain that John Marvel had gone thither to rescue a lost girl. This, Kalender once informed me, was the true art of making headlines. "Half the world don't read anything but the headlines," he asserted, "and the other half don't remember anything else." The story made a sensation which Kalender himself might have coveted.

That day about noon Mrs. Argand received a call from her counsel, the Hon. Collis McSheen, who unfolded to her such a diabolical scheme to injure her property interests in common with those of every other important property holder in the city, by a wicked Jewish wretch and his fellow in mischief, who professed to be a preacher of the Gospel in a chapel which she had largely helped to build for the poor, that between fright and rage the good lady was scarcely able to wait long enough to summon the Rev. Dr. Capon to her house. The Hon. Collis did not mention the fact that one of his own houses was at that moment closed through the act of this scheming parson, nor that he was beginning to shake over the idea that the investigation beginning to be set on foot in consequence of the meddlesomeness of this same person might reach uncomfortably near his own door, and that he was sensible that a force was being aroused which he could not control.

Most women trust implicitly in their lawyers, and, curiously enough, many trust them in their affairs even when they know they are dishonest. Coll McSheen knew perfectly how to deal with Mrs. Argand. He descanted eloquently on his duty to the great estate she represented and his pride in her admirable management of it. One of the great fountains of charity was in danger.

The Reverend Doctor Bartholomew Capon visited his parishioner and was quite as much upset as she herself was over the information received from Mr. McSheen. Dr. Capon had but an indifferent opinion of Mr. McSheen. He knew him to be by repute a protector of evildoers, a man of loose morals and low instincts, but he was a man of power of the brute kind and of keen insight into the grosser conditions. And his views as to the effect on property of any movement in the city were entitled to great respect, and property, to the doctor's mind, was undoubtedly a divine institution. Moreover, a Jew who assailed it must have some ulterior design. And to think of his having been permitted to speak in his chapel! So Dr. Capon returned to his home much displeased with his assistant and, sitting down, wrote him a note immediately.

This note John Marvel received next morning in his mail. It ran as follows:

"Mr. Marvel will call at the rector's office to-morrow, Tuesday, at 11.30 promptly.

"(Signed) Bartholomew Capon, D.D.,

"Rector, etc., etc."

The tone of the note struck even John Marvel and he immediately brought it over to me. We both agreed that the doctor must have read the account of the raid on Madam Snow's and of his presence there when the officers arrived, and we decided that, notwithstanding the curtness of the summons, it was due to John himself to go and make a simple statement of the matter. We felt indeed that the interview might result in awakening the living interest of Dr. Capon in the work on which we had embarked and securing the co-operation not only of himself but of the powerful organization which he represented as rector of a large church. Dr. Capon was not a difficult man; in his own way, which was the way of many others, he tried to do good. He was only a worldly man and a narrow man. He felt that his mission was to the rich. He knew them better than the poor and liked them better. The poor had so much done for them, why should not he look after the rich? Like Simon, he believed that there was a power in money which was unlimited.

At 11.30 promptly John Marvel presented himself in the front room of the building attached to the church, in one corner of which was the rector's roomy office. A solemn servant was in waiting who took in his name, closing the door silently behind him, and after a minute returned and silently motioned John Marvel to enter. Dr. Capon was seated at his desk with a number of newspapers before him, and in response to John's "Good morning," he simply said, "Be seated," with a jerk of his head toward a chair which was placed at a little distance from him, and John took the seat, feeling, as he afterward told me, much as he used to feel when a small boy, when he was called up by a teacher and set down in a chair for a lecture. The rector shuffled his newspapers in a sudden little accession of excitement, taking off his gold-rimmed glasses and putting them on again, and then taking up one, he turned to John.

"Mr. Marvel, I am astonished at you—I am simply astounded that you should have so far forgotten yourself and what was due to your orders as to have done what I read in this sheet and what the whole press is ringing with."

"Well, sir," said John, who had by this time gotten entire control of himself, and felt completely at ease in the consciousness of his innocence and of his ability to prove it. "I am not surprised that you should be astounded unless you knew the facts of the case."

"What facts, sir?" demanded Dr. Capon sternly. "Facts! There is but one fact to be considered—that you have violated a fundamental canon."

"Yes, I knew it would look so, and I had intended to come yesterday to consult you as to the best method——"

"It is a pity you had not done so—that you allowed your sense of duty to be so obscured as to forget what was due alike to me and to your sacred vows."

"But I was very much engaged," pursued John, "with matters that appeared to me of much greater importance than anything relating to my poor self."

"Oh!" exclaimed the rector. "Cease! Cease your pretences! Mr. Marvel, your usefulness is ended. Sign that paper!"

He picked up and held out to him with a tragic air a paper which he had already prepared before John Marvel's arrival. John's mind had for the moment become a blank to some extent under the unexpected attack, and it was a mechanical act by which his eye took in the fact that the paper thrust into his hand was a resignation declaring that it was made on the demand of the rector for reasons stated which rendered it imperative that he sever his connection with that parish.

"I will not sign that paper," said John quietly.

"You will not what?" The rector almost sprang out of his chair.

"I will not sign that paper."

"And pray, why not?"

"Because it places me in the position of acknowledging a charge which, even if true, has not been specifically stated, and which is not true whatever the appearances may be, as I can readily prove."

"Not true?" the rector exclaimed. "Is it not true that you allowed a Jew to speak in your church, in my chapel?"

"That I did what?" asked John, amazed at the unexpected discovery of the rector's reason.

"That you invited and permitted a man named Wolffert, a socialistic Jew, to address a congregation in my chapel?"

"It is true," said John Marvel, "that I invited Mr. Wolffert to speak to an assemblage in the chapel under my charge, and that he did so speak there."

"Uttering the most dangerous and inflammatory doctrines—doctrines alike opposed to the teaching of the church and to the command of the law?"

"That is not true," said John. "You have been misinformed."

"I do not wish or propose to discuss either this or any other matter with you, Mr. Marvel. You have allowed a Jew to speak in the house of God. Your usefulness is ended. You will be good enough to sign this paper, for you may rest assured that I know my rights and shall maintain them."

"No, I will not sign this paper," said John Marvel, "but I will resign. Give me a sheet of paper."

The rector handed him a sheet, and John drew up a chair to the desk and wrote his resignation in a half-dozen words and handed it to the rector.

"Is that accepted?" he asked quietly.

"It is." The rector laid the sheet on his desk and then turned back to John Marvel. "And now, Mr. Marvel, allow me to say that you grossly, I may say flagitiously, violated the trust I reposed in you when——"

John Marvel held up his hand. "Stop! Not one word more from you. I am no longer your assistant. I have stood many things from you because I believed it was my duty to stand them, so long as I was in a position where I could be of service, and because I felt it my duty to obey you as my superior officer, but now that this connection is severed, I wish to say that I will not tolerate one more word or act of insolence from you."

"Insolence?" cried the rector. "Insolence? You are insolent yourself, sir. You do not know the meaning of the term."

"Oh! Yes, I know it," said John, who had cooled down after his sudden outbreak. "I have had cause to know it. I have been your assistant for two years. I bid you good morning, Dr. Capon." He turned and walked out, leaving the rector speechless with rage.

I do not mean in relating Dr. Capon's position in this interview to make any charge against others who might honestly hold the same view which he held as to the propriety of John Marvel's having requested Leo Wolffert to speak in his church, however much I myself might differ from that view, and however I might think in holding it they are tithing the mint, anise, and cumin, and overlooking the weightier matters of the law. My outbreak of wrath, when John Marvel told me of his interview with the rector, was due, not to the smallness of the rector's mind, but to the simple fact that he selected this as the basis of his charge, when in truth it was overshadowed in his mind by the fact that Leo Wolffert's address had aroused the ire of one of his leading parishioners, and that the doctor was thus guilty of a sham in bringing his charge, not because of the address, but because of the anger of his wealthy parishioner. Wolffert was savage in his wrath when he learned how John had been treated. "Your church is the church of the rich," he said to me; for he would not say it to John. And when I defended it and pointed to its work done among the poor, to its long line of faithful devoted workers, to its apostles and martyrs, to John Marvel himself, he said: "Don't you see that Dr. Caiaphas is one of its high-priests and is turning out its prophets? I tell you it will never prosper till he is turned out and the people brought in! Your Church is the most inconsistent in the world, and I wonder they do not see it. Its Head, whom it considers divine and worships as God, lived and died in a continual war against formalism and sacerdotalism, it was the foundation of all his teaching for which he finally suffered death at the hands of the priests. The imperishable truth in that teaching is that God is within you, and to be worshipped 'in spirit' and in truth; that not the temple made with hands, but the temple of the body is the one temple, and that the poor are his chosen people—the poor in heart are his loved disciples; yet your priests arrogate to themselves all that he suffered to overthrow. Your Dr. Capon is only Dr. Caiaphas, with a few slight changes, and presumes to persecute the true disciples precisely as his predecessors persecuted their master."

"He is not my Dr. Capon," I protested.

"Oh! well, he is the representative of the ecclesiasticism that crucifies spiritual freedom and substitutes form for substance. He 'makes broad his phylacteries and for a pretence makes long prayers.'"

"It appears to me that you are very fond of quoting the Bible, for an unbeliever," I said.

"I, an unbeliever! I, a Jew!" exclaimed Wolffert, whose eyes were sparkling. "My dear sir, I am the believer of the ages—I only do not believe that any forms established by men are necessary to bring men into communion with God—I refuse to believe selfishness, and arrogance, and blindness, when they step forth with bell, book, and candle, and say, obey us, or be damned. I refuse to worship a ritual, or a church. I will worship only God." He turned away with that detached air which has always struck me as something oriental.

As soon as it became known in his old parish that John had resigned he was called back there; but the solicitations of his poor parishioners that he should not abandon them in their troubles prevailed, and Wolffert and I united in trying to show him that his influence now was of great importance. Indeed, the workers among the poor of every church came and besought him to remain. Little Father Tapp, patting him on the shoulder, said, "Come to us, John, the Holy Father will make you a bishop." So he remained with his people and soon was given another small chapel under a less fashionable and more spiritual rector. I think Eleanor Leigh had something to do with his decision. I know that she was so urgent for him to remain that both Dr. Capon and I were given food for serious thought.

THE PEACE-MAKER

It was in this condition of affairs that a short time after John Marvel had been dismissed from his cure by his incensed rector, a great dinner was given by Mrs. Argand which, because of the lavishness of the display and the number of notable persons in the city who were present, and also because of a decision that was reached by certain of the guests at the dinner and the consequences which it was hoped might ensue therefrom, was fully written up in the press. If Mrs. Argand knew one thing well, it was how to give an entertainment which should exceed in its magnificence the entertainment of any other person in the city. She was a woman of great wealth. She had had a large experience both at home and abroad in entertainments whose expenditure remained traditional for years. She had learned from her husband the value, as a merely commercial venture, of a fine dinner. She knew the traditional way to men's hearts, and she felt that something was due to her position, and at the same time she received great pleasure in being the centre and the dispenser of a hospitality which should be a wonder to all who knew her. Her house with its great rooms and galleries filled with expensive pictures lent itself well to entertainment. And Mrs. Argand, who knew something of history, fancied that she had what quite approached a salon. To be sure, those who frequented it were more familiar with stock-exchanges and counting-houses than with art or literature. On this occasion she had assembled a number of the leading men of affairs in the city, with the purpose not so much of entertaining them, as of securing from them a co-operation, which, by making a show of some concession to the starving strikers and their friends, should avail to stop the steady loss in her rents and drain on even her great resources. She had already found herself compelled, by reason of the reduction in her income, which prevented her putting by as large a surplus as she had been accustomed to put by year by year, to cut off a number of her charities, and this she disliked to do, for she not only regretted having to cut down her outlay for the relief of suffering, but it was a blow to her pride to feel that others knew that her income was reduced.

The idea of the dinner had been suggested by no less a person than Dr. Capon himself, to whom the happy thought had occurred that possibly if a huge mass meeting composed of the strikers could be assembled in some great auditorium, and addressed by the leading men in the city, they might be convinced of the folly and error of their ways and induced to reject the false teaching of their designing leaders and return to work, by which he argued the great suffering would be immediately reduced, the loss alike to labor and to capital would be stopped, peace would be restored, and the general welfare be tremendously advanced. Moreover, he would show that his removal of his assistant was not due to his indifference to the poor as Wolffert had charged in a biting paper on the episode, but to a higher motive. What John Marvel had tried on a small scale he would accomplish on a vast one. He would himself, he said, take pleasure in addressing such an audience, and he felt sure that they would listen to the friendly admonition of a minister of the Gospel, who could not but stand to them as the representative of charity and divine compassion.

I will not attempt to describe the richness of the floral decorations which made Mrs. Argand's great house a bower of roses and orchids for the occasion, nor the lavish display of plate, gilded and ungilded, which loaded the great table, all of which was set forth in the press the following day with a lavishness of description and a wealth of superlatives quite equal to the display at the dinner; nor need I take time to describe the guests who were assembled. Mr. Leigh, who was invited, was not present, but expressed himself as ready to meet his men half-way. Every viand not in season was in the ménu. It was universally agreed by the guests that no entertainment which was recalled had ever been half so rich in its decorations or so regal in its display or so sumptuous in its fare; that certainly the same number of millions had never been represented in any private house in this city, or possibly, in any city of the country. It remains only to be said that the plan proposed by the Rev. Dr. Capon met with the approval of a sufficient number to secure an attempt at its adoption, though the large majority of the gentlemen present openly expressed their disbelief that any good whatever would come of such an attempt, and more than one frankly declared that the doctor was attempting to sprinkle rose-water when really what was actually needed were guns and bayonets. The doctor, however, was so urgent in the expression of his views, so certain that the people would be reasonable and could not fail to be impressed by a kindly expression of interest, and the sound advice of one whom they must recognize as their friend, that a half-derisive consent was given to a trial of his plan.

Among the notices of this dinner was one which termed it "Belshazzar's Feast," and as such it became known in the workingmen's quarter. Its scorching periods described the Babylonian splendor of the entertainment provided for the officials of millionairedom, and pictured with simple art the nakedness of a hovel not five blocks away, in which an old man and an old woman had been found that day frozen to death. I recognized in it the work of Wolffert's virile pen. John Marvel might forgive Dr. Capon, but not Wolffert Dr. Caiaphas. The proposed meeting, however, excited much interest in all circles of the city, especially in that underlying circle of the poor whose circumference circumscribed and enclosed all other circles whatsoever. What was, indeed, of mere interest to others was of vital necessity to them, that some arrangement should be arrived at by which work should once more be given to the ever-increasing body of the unemployed, whose sombre presence darkened the brightest day and tinged with melancholy the fairest expectation. In furtherance of Dr. Capon's plan a large hall was secured, and a general invitation was issued to the public, especially to the workingmen of the section where the strike existed, to attend a meeting set for the earliest possible moment, an evening in the beginning of the next week. The meeting took place as advertised and the attendance exceeded all expectation. The heart of the poor beat with renewed hope, though, like their wealthy neighbors, many of them felt that the hope was a desperate one. Still they worked toward the single ray of light which penetrated into the gloom of their situation.

The seats were filled long before the hour set for the meeting and every available foot of standing room was occupied, the corridors of the building were filled, and the streets outside were thronged with groups discussing the possibility of some settlement in low and earnest tones, broken now and then by some strident note of contention or sullen growl of hate. Knowing the interest in the movement throughout the quarter where I lived, and having some curiosity besides to hear what Coll McSheen and the Rev. Dr. Capon had to say, I went early in company with Wolffert and John Marvel, the former of whom was absolutely sceptical, the latter entirely hopeful of permanent results. Wolffert's eyes glowed with a deep but lambent flame as he spoke of "Dr. Caiaphas." On arrival at the hall he left us and moved to the front rows. The crowd on the platform represented the leaders in many departments of business in the city, among whom were a fair sprinkling of men noted for their particular interest in all public charities and good works, and in a little group to one side, a small body composed of the more conservative element among the leaders of the workingmen in the city. The whole affair had been well worked up and on the outside it gave a fair promise of success. A number of boxes were filled with ladies interested in the movement and I had not been in the hall five minutes before I discovered Eleanor Leigh in one of the boxes, her face grave, but her eyes full of eager expectation. It was with a sinking of the heart that I reflected on the breach between us, and I fear that I spent my time much more in considering how I should overcome it than in plans to relieve the distress of others.

The meeting opened with an invocation by the Rev. Dr. Capon, which appeared to strike some of the assemblage as somewhat too eloquent, rather too long, and tinged with an expression of compassion for the ignorance and facility for being misguided of the working class. When he began the assemblage was highly reverent, when he ended there were murmurs of criticism and discussion audible throughout the hall. The introductory statement of the reason for the call was made by the Hon. Collis McSheen, who, as mayor of the city, lent the dignity of his presence to the occasion. It was long, eloquent, and absolutely silent as to his views on any particular method of settlement of the question at issue, but it expressed his sympathy with all classes in terms highly general and concluded with an impartial expression of advice that they should get together, provided all could get what they wanted, which appeared to him the easiest thing in the world to do. Following him, one of the magnates of the city, Mr. James Canter, Sr., delivered a brief business statement of the loss to the city and the community at large, growing out of the strike, expressed in figures which had been carefully collated, and closed with the emphatic declaration that the working people did not know what they wanted. One other thing he made plain, that in a strike the working people suffered most, which was a proposition that few persons in the hall were prepared to deny. Then came the Rev. Dr. Capon, who was manifestly the chief speaker for the occasion. His manner was graceful and self-assured, his voice sonorous and well modulated, and his tone was sympathetic, if somewhat too patronizing. His first sentences were listened to with attention. He expressed his deep sympathy somewhat as the mayor had done, but in better English and more modulated tones, with all classes, especially with the working people. A slight cough appeared to have attacked one portion of the audience, but it stopped immediately, and silence once more fell on the assemblage as he proceeded.

"And now," he said, as he advanced a step nearer to the edge of the platform, and, having delivered himself of his preliminary expressions of condolence, threw up his head and assumed his best pulpit manner, "under a full sense of my responsibility to my people and my country I wish to counsel you as your friend, as the friend of the poor"—the slight cough I have mentioned became audible again—"as the friend of the workingman whose interests I have so deeply at heart."

At this moment a young man who had taken a seat well to the front on the main aisle, rose in his seat and politely asked if the doctor would allow him to ask him a question, the answer to which he believed would enable the audience to understand his position better. The pleasant tone of the young man led the doctor to give permission, and also the young man's appearance, for it was Wolffert.

"Certainly, my dear sir," he said.

Wolffert suddenly held up in his hand a newspaper.

"I wish," he said, "to ask you where you dined last Friday night; with whom?"

The question provoked a sudden outpour of shouts and cheers and cries of derision, and in a moment pandemonium had broken loose. The doctor attempted to speak again and again, but about all that could be heard was his vociferation that he was their friend. Wolffert, whose question had caused the commotion, was now mounted on a chair and waving his arms wildly about him, and presently, moved by curiosity, the tumult subsided and the audience sat with their faces turned toward the man on the chair. He turned, and with a sweep of his arm toward the stage, he cried:

"We don't want to hear you. What have you done that you should give us advice? What do you know of us? When have you ever hearkened to the cry of the destitute? When have you ever visited the fatherless and the widows in affliction, unless they were rich? When have you ever done anything but fawn on Herod and flatter Pontius? Whom are you here to help and set free to-day? These people? No! High-priest of wealth and power and usurpation, we know you and your friends—the Jesus you ask to free is not the Nazarene, but Barabbas, the robber, promoter of vice and patron of sin!"

His long arm pointed at the platform where sat McSheen, his face black with impotent rage. "If we are to have a priest to address us, let us have one that we can trust. Give us a man like John Marvel. We know him and he knows us." He turned and pointed to Marvel.

The effect was electrical. Shouts of "Marvel! Mr. Marvel! Marvel! Marvel! John Marvel!" rang from their throats, and suddenly, as with one impulse, the men turned to our corner where John Marvel had sunk in his seat to escape observation, and in an instant he was seized, drawn forth and lifted bodily on the shoulders of men and borne to the platform as if on the crest of a tidal wave. Coll McSheen and Dr. Capon were both shouting to the audience, but they might as well have addressed a tropical hurricane. The cries of "Marvel, Marvel" drowned every other sound, and presently those on the stage gathered about both McSheen and the rector, and after a moment one of them stepped forward and asked John Marvel to speak.

John Marvel turned, stepped forward to the edge of the platform, and reached out one long arm over the audience with an awkward but telling gesture that I had often seen him use, keeping it extended until, after one great outburst of applause, the tumult had died down.

"My friends," he began. Another tumult.

"That is it. Yes, we are your friends."

Still the arm outstretched commanded silence.

He began to speak quietly and slowly and his voice suddenly struck me as singularly sympathetic and clear, as it must have struck the entire assembly, for suddenly the tumult ceased and the hall became perfectly quiet. He spoke only a few minutes, declaring that he had not come to speak to them; but to be with them, and pray that God might give them (he said "us") peace and show some way out of the blackness which had settled down upon them. He bade them not despair, however dark the cloud might be which had overshadowed them. They might be sure that God was beyond it and that He would give light in His own time. He was leading them now, as always—the presence of that assembly, with so many of the leading men of the city asking a conference, was in itself a proof of the great advance their cause had made. That cause was not, as some thought, so much money a day, but was the claim to justice and consideration and brotherly kindness. He himself was not a business man. He knew nothing of such matters. His duty was to preach—to preach peace—to preach the love of God—to preach patience and long-suffering and forgiveness, the teaching of his Lord and master, who had lived in poverty all His life, without a place to lay His head, and had died calling on God to forgive His enemies.

This is a poor summary of what he said very simply but with a feeling and solemnity which touched the great audience, who suddenly crushed out every attempt to contradict his proposition. Something had transformed him so that I could scarcely recognize him. I asked myself, can this be John Marvel, this master of this great audience? What is the secret of his power? The only answer I could find was in his goodness, his sincerity, and sympathy.

"And now," he said in closing, "whatever happens, please God, I shall be with you and take my lot among you, and I ask you as a favor to me to listen to Dr. Capon."

There was a great uproar and shout; for Dr. Capon had, immediately after John Marvel got control of his audience, risen from his seat, seized his hat and coat and cane, and stalked with great majesty from the platform. There were, however, a number of other speeches, and although there was much noise and tumult, some advance was made; for a general, though by no means unanimous, opinion was shown in favor of something in the nature of a reconciliation.

As I glanced up after John Marvel returned amid the shouts to his seat, I saw Miss Leigh in one of the boxes leaning forward and looking with kindled eyes in our direction. Thinking that she was looking at me, and feeling very forgiving, I bowed to her, and it was only when she failed to return my bow that I apprehended that she was not looking at me but at John Marvel. If she saw me she gave no sign of it; and when I walked the streets that night, strikes and strikers occupied but little of my thoughts. Unless I could make up with Eleanor Leigh, the whole world might go on strike for me. I determined to consult John Marvel. He had somehow begun to appear to me the sanest of advisers. I began to feel that he was, as Wolffert had once said of him, "a sort of Ark of the Covenant."

THE FLAG OF TRUCE

My acquaintance was now extending rapidly. I had discovered in the turgid tide that swept through the streets of the city other conditions and moods than those I first remarked: dark brooding shadows and rushing rapids catching the light, but fierce and deadly beneath; placid pools and sequestered eddies, far apart where the sunlight sifted in and lay soft on the drift that had escaped the flood, touching it with its magic and lending it its sweet radiance. I had found, indeed, that the city was an epitome of the world. It took a great many people to make it and there were other classes in it besides the rich and the poor. It was in one of these classes that I was beginning to find myself most at home.

I received one day an invitation to dine one evening the following week at the house of a gentleman whom I had met a week or two before and whom I had called on in response to an invitation unusually cordial. I had not been to a fashionable dinner since I had come to the West, and I looked forward with some curiosity to the company whom I should meet at Mr. Desport's, for I knew nothing about him except that I had met him in a law case and we had appeared to have a number of things in common, including objects of dislike, and further, that when I called on him he lived in a very handsome house, and I was received in one of the most charming libraries it was ever my good fortune to enter, and with a graciousness on the part of his wife which I had never known excelled. It was like stepping into another world to pass from the rush of the city into that atmosphere of refinement and culture.

My heart, however, was a little lower down than it should have been, for I could not but reflect with how much more pleasure I would have arrayed myself if it had been an invitation to Mr. Leigh's. In truth, the transition from my narrow quarters and the poverty of those among whom I had been living for some time, made this charming house appear to me the acme of luxury, and I was conscious of a sudden feeling, as I passed this evening through the ample and dignified hall into the sumptuous drawing-room, that somehow I was well fitted for such surroundings. Certainly I found them greatly to my taste. I was received again most graciously by Mrs. Desport, and as I had followed my provincial custom of coming a little ahead of time, I was the first visitor to arrive, a fact which I did not regret, as Mrs. Desport took occasion to tell me something of the guests whom she expected. After describing what I concluded to be a somewhat staid and elderly company, she added:

"I have given you a young lady whom I feel sure you will like. She is a little serious-minded, I think, and some people consider that she is simply posing; but however eccentric she may be, I believe that she is really in earnest, and so does my husband; and I have never seen a young girl improve so much as she has done since she took up this new work of hers."

What this work was I was prevented from inquiring by the arrival of a number of guests all at once.

A dinner where the guests are not presented to each other differs in no important sense from a table-d'hôte dinner. The soup is likely to be a trifle colder and the guests a trifle more reserved—that is all. Mrs. Desport, however, followed the old-fashioned custom of introducing her guests to each other, preferring to open the way for them to feel at home, rather than to leave them floundering among inanities about the weather and their taste for opera. And though a lady, whom I presently sat next to, informed me that they did not do it "in England or even in New York now," I was duly grateful.

Having been presented to the company, I found them gay and full of animation, even though their conversation was inclined to be mainly personal and related almost exclusively to people with whom, for the most part, I had no acquaintance. The name of young Canter figured rather more extensively in it than was pleasant to me, and Dr. Capon was handled with somewhat less dignity than the cloth might have been supposed to require. I was, however, just beginning to enjoy myself when my attention was suddenly diverted by the sound of a voice behind me, as another guest arrived. I did not even need to turn to recognize Eleanor Leigh, but when I moved around sufficiently to take a side glance at her, I was wholly unprepared for the vision before me. I seemed to have forgotten how charming she looked, and she broke on me like a fresh dawn after a storm. I do not know what I was thinking, or whether I was not merely just feeling, when my hostess came forward.

"Now we are all here. Mr. Glave, you are to take Miss Leigh in. You know her, I believe?"

I felt myself red and pale by turns and, glancing at Miss Leigh, saw that she, too, was embarrassed. I was about to stammer something when my hostess moved away, and as it appeared that the others had all paired off, there was nothing for me to do but accept the situation. As I walked over and bowed, I said in a low tone:

"I hope you will understand that I had no part in this. I did not know."

She evidently heard, for she made a slight bow and then drew herself up and took my arm.

"I should not have come," I added, "had I known of this. However, I suppose it is necessary that we should at least appear to be exchanging with ordinary interest the ordinary inanities of such an occasion."