At this point this article might well end, but there may be some who recall that last summer for a week or so there appeared in the papers articles headed "Fakes at the Museum" or "The Metropolitan Gets Lemons," which assailed the genuineness of these portraits. The discussion did not get far beyond the daily press, which, after its habit, registered the charges as picturesquely and vehemently as it could, but attempted no serious investigation of them. They were brought by a critic whose position as a special student of Stuart entitled them to respectful consideration, but after giving them that they do not seem conclusive or even important. They were based on the fact that the pictures were signed G. Stuart, R. A., and bore coats of arms and long Spanish inscriptions. It was claimed that this made the genuineness of the canvases doubtful, for Stuart signed few of his paintings—possibly none except the standing Washington in the Philadelphia Academy; he was not an R. A. (Royal Academician); nor was he a heraldic illuminator. Furthermore, the painting of the male portrait and the dress and accessories in the companion piece did not seem to the critic to agree with Stuart's handling. To make his impressions fit with the pictures, the critic supposed that Stuart painted a smaller portrait of Jaudenes and started one of his wife, which through some freak of temper he left (as he frequently did) with only the head and part of the background finished. These being brought to Spain, some artist there finished the lady's portrait, painted from Stuart's original a companion piece of her husband, and added to both the coats of arms, the inscriptions, and Stuart's name.

Now, frankly, this is not possible. As for the portrait of Dona Matilde being left unfinished, there exists in Stuart's handwriting a list of gentlemen who are to have copies of his portrait of Washington, consisting of thirty-two names. A few take two copies, no one takes more save Jaudenes, who subscribes for five. The list is dated April 20th, 1795, which is seven months after the date on the pictures, and is the strongest possible evidence that Jaudenes was greatly pleased with Stuart—presumably on account of these portraits—and is entirely irreconcilable with the idea that the painter had quarreled with the diplomat's wife or left her portrait unfinished.

As to the coats of arms, the most casual examination makes it clear that they were painted by another hand than executed any part of the portraits. In all probability they were done after the canvases reached Spain, and the inscriptions and signatures would naturally have been added at the same time. Stuart would never have engrossed a long Spanish inscription, and that he should have signed his name (contrary to his habit) and have added the "R. A." to which he had no right is most unlikely. What is most unlikely of all, however, is that there should have been found in Spain an artist capable of painting a portrait like the Don Josef. Both heads are absolutely alike in handling, in texture, in mixing of the pigments, and in all of those things are absolutely characteristic of Stuart, whose methods were peculiarly his own and could not be caught even by men like Sully, who not only intently studied his processes but sat and watched him when he was at work. That a Spaniard with entirely different training and ideals could have reproduced them is impossible.

As for the costumes, it may be admitted that they differ from most of Stuart's American work; but the difference is more in subject than in method and is chiefly noticeable because he never again painted a gentleman in silver-sprigged scarlet waistcoat and small clothes. He hated such work, and his position in America enabled him to do as he chose, and he could tell sitters that if they wanted clothes they could go to a mantua-maker or a tailor, he painted the works of God. So distasteful was such labor to him that we know that he employed assistants in the details of some of his Washington portraits. In the present canvases the heads are painted with an interest and a thoroughness very different from that displayed in the costumes. These latter are skilfully done. The dexterity displayed is amazing and such as no copyist is at all likely to have had, but it is dexterity applied to getting a striking result as quickly as possible and with the least possible effort of hand or brain.

Now, to explain this, we should remember that Stuart only returned to America in 1793, and the pictures are both dated September 8, 1794. Whatever that date may mean, both pictures were presumably finished before then and were thus among the first, perhaps the very first, important works that Stuart did in New York. He would consequently have every motive, both from the desire to establish his reputation and from the position and charm of his sitters, to do his very best. The workmanship should be compared, not with what he did afterwards in America but rather with what he had done before in England and Ireland, when he was compelled by the exigencies of his sitters and the rivalry of his fellow artists to give some importance to costume and composition. Unfortunately, Stuart's foreign work is practically unknown to Americans (and to foreigners also, for that matter). There is little of it in the public galleries, and a large proportion of it has probably been rechristened with other and more attractive names. As far as we may judge from a few examples and from the many engravings after it (some of them large enough and good enough to give an idea of the handling), the costumes were done much in the style of those we are considering.

After all, the strongest argument for the authenticity of the portraits is the portraits themselves. They are beautiful, they are skilful, done in Stuart's style and entirely worthy of him. To suppose them done by any one else involves the doubter at once in a maze of improbabilities and impossibilities. The present writer is willing to put himself on record as quite convinced that they were painted by Stuart and are wholly by his own hand and are unusually important specimens of his work.



MARY BAKER G. EDDY

THE STORY OF HER LIFE AND THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

BY

GEORGINE MILMINE

XIV

MRS. EDDY'S BOOK AND DOCTRINE

"No human tongue or pen taught me the Science contained in this book, 'Science and Health'; and neither tongue nor pen can overthrow it."—MARY BAKER G. EDDY.

Although Mrs. Eddy's book, "Science and Health," was not published until 1875, from the time Mrs. Eddy left P. P. Quimby in 1864 she had been struggling to get his theories before the public. Dr. Patterson, her second husband, left her in 1866, and for the next four years Mrs. Eddy was able to make a bare living by her "Science," wandering about among the little shoe towns near Boston and teaching Quimby's theories here and there for her board and lodging. She went from house to house with her precious copy of Quimby's "Questions and Answers"[2] and the pile of letter-paper, covered with her own notes, which she was forever rewriting and revising. The one thing that everybody knew about Mrs. Glover (Eddy) was that she "was writing a book." While she was staying with the Wentworths, in Stoughton, she carried her pile of manuscript to Boston, and when the printer to whom she showed it demanded to be paid in advance, she tried to persuade Mrs. Wentworth to lend her the money. Had the printer who looked over that confused mass of notes known that they were the nucleus of a book of which over five hundred thousand copies would be sold by 1907, and had he printed the manuscript then and there, Christian Science in its present form would never have existed. For at that time Mrs. Eddy had not dreamed of calling her system of mind cure anything but Dr. Quimby's "Science." She talked of Quimby to every one she met; could talk, indeed, of little else. When she introduced the subject of mental healing to a stranger—and she never lost an opportunity—it was always with that conscious smile and the set phrases which the village girls used to imitate: "I learned this from Dr. Quimby, and he made me promise to teach at least two persons before I die."

The story of the Quimby manuscript from 1867 to 1875 and of the gradual growth of Mrs. Eddy's feeling of possession, has already been recounted in an earlier chapter of this history.[3] By the time the first edition of "Science and Health" appeared, Mrs. Eddy said no more about Quimby or her promise to him. Mrs. Eddy has always been able to believe anything she wishes to believe, especially about her own conduct and about that of persons who have displeased her, and it is very probable that by this time she had persuaded herself that she really owed very little to the old Maine philosopher.

How "Science and Health" was Published

Although Mrs. Eddy had been working upon her book for about eight years, writing and rewriting with almost incredible patience, she was unwilling to assume any financial risk in getting it printed. George Barry and Elizabeth Newhall, two of her students, agreed to furnish the sum of one thousand dollars, which the Boston printer asked for issuing an edition of one thousand copies. Mrs. Eddy made so many changes in the proofs, continuing her revisions even after the plates had been cast, that she ran the cost of the edition up to about twenty-two hundred dollars, and Miss Newhall and Mr. Barry lost about fifteen hundred dollars on the book. They would, indeed, have lost more, had not Daniel Spofford, much against Mrs. Eddy's will, paid over to them six hundred dollars which he had received for the copies of the book he had sold. Although Mrs. Eddy at that time owned the house in which she lived and had some money in bank, she did not, either then or later, suggest reimbursing Barry or Miss Newhall for their loss.

Aside from the fact that she was unwilling to risk money upon it, Mrs. Eddy believed intensely in her book. One of her devoted students sent copies of "Science and Health" to the University of Heidelberg, to Thomas Carlyle, and to several noted theologians. But the book made no stir outside of Lynn, where it caused some perplexity. There was little about it, indeed, to suggest that it would be an historic volume. It was a book of 564 pages, badly printed and poorly bound; a mass of inconsequential statements and ill-constructed, ambiguous sentences which wander about the page with their arms full, so to speak, heedlessly dropping unrelated clauses about as they go.

Although the basic ideas of the book are Quimby's, and even much of the terminology, the first edition of "Science and Health" was certainly written by Mrs. Eddy. Not only is there every internal evidence of her hand in the style of the book, but a number of her students are still alive who went over portions of the manuscript with her and worked with her upon the proofs. The same George Barry who helped to pay for the publication of the book copied out in longhand twenty-five hundred pages of the manuscript. He brought suit against Mrs. Eddy for payment for "copying the manuscript of the book 'Science and Health,' and aiding in the arrangement of capital letters and some of the grammatical constructions." He produced some of Mrs. Eddy's manuscript in court, and the judge allowed him more than the usual copyist's rate "on account of the difficulty which a portion of the pages presented to the copyist by reason of erasures and interlineations," as it is put in the judge's finding.

Although Mrs. Eddy's book has been enlarged and greatly improved as to its order and grammar, the first edition contains all the essential elements of her philosophy, if such it may be called. Mr. Wiggin did good work in translating the book into comparatively conventional English, and gave a kind of unity to paragraphs and sentences, and later revisers have greatly improved upon his work; but the first edition gave a fairly complete and, on the whole, a comprehensible statement of Mrs. Eddy's platform.

Mrs. Eddy's religion claims to be a system of metaphysics, a system of therapeutics, and an improved form of Christianity. As the founder of a system of idealistic philosophy, Mrs. Eddy does indeed, as Mr. Alfred Farlow says, "begin where the sages of the world left off." Other philosophers have reached the conclusion that we can have no absolute knowledge of matter, since our evidence regarding it consists of sense impressions, and that we can absolutely assert of matter only that it exists in human consciousness; but Mrs. Eddy begins boldly with, "There is no such thing as matter." She reaches her conclusion by steps which she deems complete and logical:

1. God is All in all. 2. God is good. Good is Mind. 3. God, Spirit, being all, nothing is matter.

Mrs. Eddy calls attention to the fact that even if read backward, these propositions mean identically the same as when read in the usual order, and she seems to regard this as conclusive proof of their logical truth. She says, "The metaphysics of Christian Science, like the rules of mathematics, prove the rule by inversion. For example: there is no pain in Truth, and no truth in pain; no nerve in Mind, and no mind in nerve; no matter in Mind, and no mind in matter," etc.

In his article upon Christian Science, published in The Atlantic Monthly, April, 1904, Dr. John Churchman says:

The uncompromising idealism, however, which Mrs. Eddy offers us not only has these defects, but is guilty of a far more serious charge. It poses as an explanation, and is in reality a total evasion. To deny that matter exists, and assert that it is an illusion, is only another way of asserting its existence; you are freed by your suggestion from explaining the fact, but forced by it to explain the illusion. It is the old mistake of imagining that an escape from a problem is a solution. You are out of the frying-pan, it is true, but you are in the fire instead.[4]

Having thus disposed of matter, Mrs. Eddy seems to think that her definition has actually changed the nature of the case, and that though we live in houses, eat food, and endure the changes of the seasons, our relation to the material universe is changed because she has defined matter as an illusion.

It is not, however, Mrs. Eddy's definition which is so remarkable, but her application of it. Having stated that matter is an illusion, she asserts that "matter cannot take cold";[5] that matter cannot "ache, swell and be inflamed";[6] that a boil cannot ache;[7] that "every law of matter or the body, supposed to govern man, is rendered null and void by the law of God".[8]

There is No Material Universe

Quimby acknowledged the actual existence of the universe, of the physical body, and of disease; Mrs. Eddy teaches that they are all illusory. The earth, the sun, the millions of stars, says Mrs. Eddy, exist only in erring "mortal mind"; and mortal mind itself does not exist. All phenomena of nature are merely illusory expressions of this fundamental error. "The compound minerals or aggregate substances composing the earth, the relations which constituent masses hold to each other, the magnitudes, distances, and revolution of the celestial bodies, are of no real importance.... Material substances, astronomical calculations, and all the paraphernalia of speculative theories ... will ultimately vanish, swallowed up in the infinite calculus of spirit." "Earthquake, wind, wave, lightning, fire, bestial ferocity" are merely the "vapid fury of mortal mind." "Heat and cold are products of mind"—even a "mill at work, or the action of a water wheel," is only a manifestation of "mortal mind force." Apart from mortal belief, there is no such thing as climate.

"Repulsion, attraction, cohesion, and powers supposed to belong to matter are constituents of mind," Mrs. Eddy says. By this she does not mean that these forces exist, for us, in our minds, but that at some time in the dim past "mortal mind" imagined matter and imagined these properties in it. Christ, she says, was able to walk upon the water and to roll away the stone of the sepulcher because he had overcome the human belief in the laws of gravity. (Yet, Mrs. Eddy is continually reminding us that the fall of an apple led Newton to discover a great law, etc.) "Geology," Mrs. Eddy says, "has never explained the earth's formations. It cannot explain them." "Natural Science is not really natural or scientific, because it is deduced from the evidences of the senses." "Vertebra, articulata, mollusca, and radiata are evolved by mortal and material thought." "Theorizing about man's development from mushrooms to monkeys, and from monkeys into men, amounts to nothing in the right direction, and very much in the wrong." But it is not only with the natural sciences that Mrs. Eddy is displeased. "Human history," she says, "needs to be revised, and the material record expunged."

Having dismissed the history of the race as trivial, the natural sciences as unscientific, the evidence of the senses as a cheat, and matter as non-existent, Mrs. Eddy proceeds to propound her own curious theory of the Universe and man. She has a theory; incomplete, but ingenious.

Mrs. Eddy's Exegesis

Mrs. Eddy says that her theory of the universe is founded, not upon human wisdom, but upon the Bible; and so it is, but she uses both addition and subtraction very liberally to get her Biblical corroboration. The Bible may be interpreted in two ways, Mrs. Eddy says, literally and spiritually, and what she sets out to do is to give us the spiritual interpretation. Her method is simple. She starts with the propositions that all is God and that there is no matter, and then reconstructs the Bible to accommodate these statements. Such portions of the Bible as can be made, by judicious treatment, to corroborate her theory, she takes and "spiritually interprets,"[9] that is, tells us once and for all what the passages really mean; and such portions as cannot possibly be converted into affirmative evidence she rejects as errors of the early copyists. Mrs. Eddy insists that the Bible is the record of truth, but a study of her exegesis shows that only such portions of it as meet with Mrs. Eddy's approval and lend themselves—under very rough handling—to the support of her theory, are accepted as the record of truth; the rest is thrown out as a mass of erroneous transcription. Mrs. Eddy's keen eye at once detects those meaningless passages which have for so long beguiled the world, just as it readily sees in familiar texts an entirely new meaning. She explains the creation of the world from the account in the first chapter of Genesis, but the unknown author of this disputed book would never recognize his narrative when Mrs. Eddy gets through with it.

Mrs. Eddy's Account of the Creation[10]

To begin with, Mrs. Eddy says, there was God, "All and in all, the eternal Principle." This Principle is both masculine and feminine; "Gender is embraced in Spirit, else God could never have shadowed forth from out Himself, the idea of male and female." But, Mrs. Eddy adds, "We have not as much authority for calling God masculine as feminine, the latter being the last, therefore highest idea given of Him."

Mrs. Eddy next sets about the creation. The "waters" out of which God brought the dry land, she says, were "Love"; the dry land itself was "the condensed idea of creation." When God divided the light from the darkness, it means, says Mrs. Eddy, that "Truth and error were distinct from the beginning, and never mingled." But Mrs. Eddy has always insisted on the idea that "error" is a delusion which arose first in the mind of mortal man; what is error doing away back here before man was created, and why was God himself compelled to take measures against it? Certainly the account of the Creation which came from Lynn is even more perplexing than that which is related in the Pentateuch.

With regard to the creation of grass and herbs, Mrs. Eddy eagerly points out that "God made every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew." And that, she says, proves that "creations of Wisdom are not dependent on laws of matter, but on Intelligence alone." She admits here that the Universe is the "idea of Creative Wisdom," which is getting dangerously near the very old idea that matter is but a manifestation of spirit. Call the universe "matter," and Mrs. Eddy flies into a rage; call it "an idea of God," and she is serenely complaisant. There was certainly never any one so put about and tricked by mere words; on the whole, it may be said that the English language has avenged itself on Mrs. Eddy.

Arriving at the creation of the beasts of the field, Mrs. Eddy says that "The beast and reptile made by Love and Wisdom were neither carnivorous nor poisonous." Ferocious tendencies in animals are entirely the product of man's imagination. Daniel understood this, we are told, and that is why the lions did not hurt him.

When she comes to the creation of man, Mrs. Eddy accepts the first account given in Genesis, but the second, which states that God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, she rejects as untrustworthy. The first account, she says, "was science; the second was metaphorical and mythical, even the supposed utterances of matter; the scripture not being understood by its translators, was misinterpreted."

The Story of Adam

"The history of Adam is allegorical throughout, a description of error and its results," etc. Man was created in God's likeness, free from sin, sickness, and death; but this Adam, who crept in, Mrs. Eddy does not explain how, was the origin of our belief that there is life in matter and was to obstruct our growth in spirituality. Mrs. Eddy says, "Divide the name Adam into two syllables, and it reads, a dam, or obstruction." This original method of word-analysis she seems to regard as final evidence concerning Adam. About the creation of Eve, Mrs. Eddy changes her mind. In the later editions of her book she says it is absurd to believe that God ever put Adam into a hypnotic sleep and performed "a surgical operation" upon him. In the first edition she says it is a mere chance that the human race is not still propagated by the removal of man's ribs. "The belief regarding the origin of mortal man has changed since Adam produced Eve, and the only reason a rib is not the present mode of evolution is because of this change," etc.

Not to be warned by the footprints of time, Mrs. Eddy pauses in her revision of Genesis to wonder "whence came the wife of Cain?" But on the whole she profits by the story of Cain, for here she finds one of those little etymological clews which never escape her penetration. The fact that Adam and all his race were but a dream of mortal mind is proved, she says, by the fact that Cain went "to dwell in the land of Nod, the land of dreams and illusions." Mrs. Eddy offers this seriously, as "scientific" exegesis.

Mrs. Eddy's conclusion about the Creation seems to be that we are all in reality the offspring of the first creation recounted in Genesis, in which man is not named but is simply said to be in the image of God; but we think we are the children of the creation described in the second chapter; of the race that imagined sickness, sin, and death for itself. The tree of knowledge which caused Adam's fall, Mrs. Eddy says, was the belief of life in matter, and she suggests that the forbidden fruit which Eve gave to Adam may have been "a medical work, perhaps."

Mrs. Eddy Denies the Atonement

When she comes to the Atonement, Mrs. Eddy says that Christ did not come to save mankind from sin, but to show us that sin is a thing imagined by mortal mind, that it is an illusion which can be overcome, like sickness and death. It was by his understanding of the truths of Christian Science that Christ remained sinless, healed the sick, and that he "demonstrated" over death in the sepulcher and rose on the third day. His sacrifice had no more efficacy than that of any other man who dies as a result of his labors to bring a new truth into the world, and we profit by his death only as we realize the nothingness of sickness, sin, and death. "God's wrath, vented on his only son, is without logic or humanity, and but a man-made belief."

The Trinity, as commonly accepted, Mrs. Eddy denies, though she seems to admit a kind of triune nature in God by saying over and over again that he is "Love, Truth, and Life."

The Holy Ghost she defines as Christian Science; "This Comforter I understand to be Divine Science."

Mrs. Eddy's Revision of the Lord's Prayer

In the course of Mrs. Eddy's revision of the Bible, she paused to "spiritually interpret" the Lord's prayer. She has revised the prayer a great many times, and different renderings of it are given in different editions of "Science and Health." The following is taken from the edition of 1902:

"Our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious, adorable One. Thy kingdom is within us, Thou art ever-present. Enable us to know—as in heaven, so on earth—God is supreme. Give us grace for to-day; feed the famished affections. And infinite Love is reflected in love. And Love leadeth us not into temptation, but delivereth from sin, disease, and death. For God is now and forever all Life, Truth, and Love."

In this interpretation the petitions have been converted into affirmations, and Mrs. Eddy's prayer seems a somewhat dry enumeration of the properties of the Deity rather than a supplication.

This method of "spiritual interpretation" has given Mrs. Eddy the habit of a highly empirical use of English. At the back of her book, "Science and Health," there is a glossary in which a long list of serviceable old English words are said to mean very especial things. The word "bridegroom" means "spiritual understanding"; "death" means "an illusion"; "evening" means "mistiness of mortal thought"; "mother" means God, etc., etc. The seventh commandment, Mrs. Eddy insists, is an injunction against adulterating Christian Science, although she also admits the meaning ordinarily attached to it. In the Journal of November, 1889, there is a long discussion of the ten commandments by the editor, in which he takes up both personal chastity and the Pure Food laws under the command, "Thou shalt not commit adultery."

Mrs. Eddy insists, and doubtless believes, that her "Science" is simply an elaboration, a more advanced explanation, of the teachings of the New Testament. Yet on the subject of repentance, which occupies so important a place in the teachings of Christ, we hear never a word, and upon that consciousness of sin, which is the burden of the Epistles, she is consistently silent. Paul's reiterated explanation of original sin, of the Atonement and Redemption, are ignored. "As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive" is made to read: "As in error all die, so in Truth shall all," etc. Even Paul's "Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" is made substantially to mean, Who shall deliver me from the belief that there is sensation in matter? Whatever cannot be "spiritually interpreted" into a confirmation of Mrs. Eddy's theory that sin, sickness, and death are non-existent, she refuses to consider.

Mrs. Eddy's Therapeutics

Mrs. Eddy's theology is, of course, a mere derivative of her system of therapeutics, an attempt to base her peculiar variety of mind-cure upon Biblical authority. In her therapeutics there is nothing new except its extremeness. That the mind is able, in a large degree, to prevent or to cause sickness and even death, all thinking people admit. Mrs. Eddy's fundamental propositions are that death is wholly unnecessary and that the body and the organs of the body have nothing to do with life. A man could live just as well after his lungs had been removed as before, if he but thought he could. "Cold, heat, exercise, study, food, infection, etc., never caused a sick or healthy condition in man." "Scrofula, fever, consumption, rheumatism or small-pox never produced pain or inharmony." "A dislocation of the tarsal joint (ankle-joint) would produce insanity as perceptible as that produced by congestion of the brain, were it not that mortal mind thinks this joint less intimately connected with mind than is the brain."

Sight and hearing do not depend upon the eyes and ears. The nervous system can really cause no suffering. "Nerves are not the source of pain or pleasure." "Nerves have no more sensation, apart from what belief bestows upon them, than the fibre of a plant." What really suffers is mind, or belief; and, if we change that belief, the pain will disappear. "You say a boil is painful," says Mrs. Eddy, "but that is impossible, for matter without mind is not painful. The boil simply manifests your belief in pain, through inflammation and swelling; and you call this belief a boil."

Mrs. Eddy even argues against spanking children because "the use of the rod is virtually a declaration to the child's mind that sensation belongs to matter."[11]

Mrs. Eddy's idea is that our lungs are necessary to us because we think they are, just as we think heavy underwear is necessary in winter. Horses and cows, certainly, do not think much about their lungs, but Mrs. Eddy says that domestic animals are controlled by the beliefs of their human masters, and that we have corrupted the horse and have taught him to have epizooetic and colic. "What," says Mrs. Eddy, "if the lungs are ulcerated? God is more to a man than his lungs." "Have no fears that matter can ache, swell, and be inflamed.... Your body would suffer no more from tension or wounds than would the trunk of a tree which you gash, were it not for mortal mind."

All functional and organic diseases are produced by a popular belief in their reality. "No gastric juice accumulates ... apart from the action of mortal thought."

"Inflammation, hemorrhages, tubercles, decompositions are all dream shadows," "Man is the same after, as before, a bone is broken or a head chopped off."

But as to who invented the idea of pain and whence came the superstition that we must have lungs to breathe and that the heart is necessary to life, Mrs. Eddy maintains a discreet silence. Sin, sickness, and death, she says, are beliefs which originated in mortal mind. And how and when did mortal mind originate? Mortal mind does not exist, she answers, therefore it had no origin. This reasoning satisfies her; she believes it perfectly adequate.

It is not only the diseased body which is to be disregarded and put out of mind, but all hygienic precautions. Mrs. Eddy particularly objects to diets, and she says that one food is as good as another. God gave man "dominion not only over the fish in the sea, but over the fish in the stomach also," she once said.

There is no such thing as fatigue: "You would not say that a wheel is fatigued; and yet the body is just as material as the wheel. If it were not for what the human mind says of the body, the body would never be weary, any more than the inanimate wheel."

Mrs. Eddy denies that physical exercise strengthens the muscles. "Because the muscles of the blacksmith's arm are strongly developed, it does not follow that exercise has produced this result, or that a less-used arm must be weak.... The trip-hammer is not increased in size by exercise. Why not, since muscles are as material as wood and iron?"

Constant bathing, Mrs. Eddy says, received a "useful rebuke from Jesus' precept, 'Take no thought ... for the body,' We must beware of making clean merely the outside of the platter."

A Sensationless Body the Goal of Existence

"A sensationless body," Mrs. Eddy says, is the ultimate hope of Christian Science. Since insensibility to pain is the ultimate good which her system of philosophy offers, it is natural that she should often point us to the lower forms of animal life for our exemplars. "The conditions of life become less imperative in lower organisms, or where there is less mind and belief on this subject." She points out hopefully that certain marine animals multiply their species by self-division. "The less mind there is manifested in matter, the better. When the unthinking lobster loses his claw, it grows again." If we but believed that matter has no sensation, "then the human limb would be replaced as readily as the lobster's claw." She points out the fact that flowers produce their seed without pain. "The snowbird sings and soars amid the blasts; he has no catarrh from wet feet."

"Obesity," Mrs. Eddy says, "is an adipose belief of yourself as a substance."

Mrs. Eddy's Physiology

The most discouraging thing about Mrs. Eddy's dissertations upon anatomy and physiology is that she seems to know so little about the physical facts and laws which she despises. She says, for instance, that a father "plunged his infant babe, only a few hours old, into water for several minutes and repeated this operation daily until the child could remain under water for twenty minutes, moving and playing without harm, like a fish." Does Mrs. Eddy actually believe that a child could live under water for twenty minutes? Again: "The supposition that we can correct insanity by the use of purgatives and narcotics is in itself a species of insanity." Where did Mrs. Eddy get the idea that such treatment was ever supposed to cure "insanity"? Mrs. Eddy says the fact that a finger which has been amputated continues to hurt is proof that nerves have nothing to do with pain, because, she states, "the nerve is gone"!

Mrs. Eddy says that when we burn a finger, not fire but mortal mind causes the injury. To this statement she adds: "Holy inspiration has created states of mind which are able to nullify the action of the flames, as in the Bible case of the three young Hebrew captives, cast into the Babylonian furnace; while an opposite mental state might produce spontaneous combustion." That is, if mortal mind worked hard enough, we could burn our fingers without any fire, or we could produce the fire by willing it.

The action of drugs depends entirely upon the belief of mortal mind. Stimulants, narcotics, poisons, affect the system solely because they are reputed to do so. And yet, with all her ingenuity, Mrs. Eddy has to admit that if a man took arsenic unknowingly it would probably kill him. This, she says, is because of the consensus of opinion that arsenic is deadly. Such would probably be her explanation of the destructive processes which go on in the world without the knowledge of man; fire consumes the forest, the tiger kills the antelope, and the bite of the cobra kills the tiger because the human mind has attributed such tendencies to fire, to the tiger, and to the cobra.

Mrs. Eddy's View of History

All the emanations of mortal mind are evil. Our redemption, Mrs. Eddy says, lies in Divine Mind, of which we are a part. "Spirit imparts the understanding which leads into all Truth.... This understanding is not intellectual, is not aided by scholarly attainments." There is no mistaking Mrs. Eddy's meaning; the thing in us which is capable of cultivation and expansion, that which inquires and investigates and reasons, is mortal mind, and is therefore evil. All the physical sciences are the harmful inventions of mortal mind, and the slow and painful accumulation of exact knowledge has been but the harmful activity of the baser element in human nature. There was never such a discouraging view of human history.

It is scarcely necessary to remark that everything which civilization most cherishes has been the direct result of that spirit of inquiry and of those inductive processes of reasoning which Mrs. Eddy despises. If the morality of the civilized world is higher to-day than it was in the fifth century, it is not because men know any more about moral laws than they did two thousand years ago, but because this same spirit of inquiry has made cleaner living possible and imperative. Mrs. Eddy says that Christian Science would abolish war; but the diminution of war has come about, not through any growth of "Divine Mind" but, as Buckle pointed out, through three triumphs of the experimental tendency of the intellect;—the discovery of gunpowder, the discovery that war was detrimental to trade and to the best economic conditions, and the improvement in methods of transportation. Contemplating the history of civilization from Mrs. Eddy's point of view, we have simply gone on developing this injurious thing, "mortal mind"—applying our intelligence to the study of the physical universe—and have gone on piling up false belief on false belief. It is "matter" that is our great delusion and that stands between us and a full understanding of God; and matter exists, or seems to exist, only because we have invented it and invented laws to govern it and have given properties to its various manifestations. The more we know about the physical universe, the heavier do we make our chains; our progress in the physical sciences does but increase the dose of the drug which enslaves us. And there have been but two breaks in this jumbled dream of "error": the first when Jesus Christ "demonstrated the nothingness of matter," the second when Mrs. Eddy proclaimed its nothingness from Lynn.

With a "sensationless body" for the goal of existence, the savage was certainly much higher in "the scale of being" than the nations of modern Europe, and Mrs. Eddy is perfectly right when she refers us to the amoeba and crustacea. Happy, indeed, the lobster who thinks so little about his anatomy that his lost claw is replaced by another!

From all her flights Mrs. Eddy comes back to her starting-point: physical well-being. Not for a single page are we permitted to forget that her religion is primarily a kind of "doctoring"; therapeutics made religion, or religion made therapeutics. She makes the fact that Christ healed the sick the principal feature of his mission, and makes it authority for her assumption that religion and therapeutics are essentially one. Certainly the burden of the New Testament is not that man may avoid suffering, but that he may suffer with noble fortitude.

Lack of Religious Feeling in Mrs. Eddy's Book

But it is before such a word as fortitude that Mrs. Eddy's book takes on its most discouraging aspect. Her foolish logic, her ignorance of the human body, the liberties which she takes with the Bible, and her burlesque exegesis, could easily be overlooked if there were any nobility of feeling to be found in "Science and Health"; any great-hearted pity for suffering, any humility or self-forgetfulness before the mysteries of life. Mrs. Eddy professes to believe that she has found the Truth, and that all the long centuries behind her have gone out in darkness and wasted effort, yet not one page of her book is tinged with compassion. "Oh that mine head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!" If there were one sentence like that in "Science and Health" no one would stop to quarrel with Mrs. Eddy's metaphysics.

But if there is little intelligence displayed in Mrs. Eddy's book, there is even less emotion. It is not exaggeration to say that "Science and Health" is absolutely devoid of religious feeling. God remains for Mrs. Eddy a "principle" indeed, toward which she has no attitude but that of a somewhat patronizing and platitudinous expositor. She discusses sin and death and human suffering as if they were curves or equations.

Malicious Animal Magnetism

In all the editions of Mrs. Eddy's book there is the same shiftiness, the same hardness, and the same astonishing complacency, and the text of the first three editions is disfigured by innumerable ebullitions of spite and hatred. In the first edition the first fifteen pages of the chapter on "Healing the Sick" are given up to an attack upon Richard Kennedy, the young man who was her first practitioner, and of whose personal popularity she was so bitterly jealous. The second edition, a small volume, is largely made up of denunciations of Daniel Spofford. The third edition opens with a preface (signed Asa G. Eddy) attacking Edward Arens, and contains the famous chapter on "Demonology" in which Mrs. Eddy devotes forty-six pages to settling scores with half a dozen of her early students, charging one and another with theft, adultery, murder, blackmail, etc. The Reverend Mr. Wiggin, when he revised Mrs. Eddy's book in 1885, persuaded her to omit these vituperative passages on the ground that they were libelous.

Mrs. Eddy's one original elemental contribution to Quimbyism, was her doctrine of Malicious Animal Magnetism; a grewsome superstition born of her own vindictiveness and distrust. Mrs. Eddy's more enlightened followers have for years tried to divert attention from this one of her doctrines, and there are hundreds of Christian Scientists in the field who know and think very little about it. But it has been a very important consideration in the lives of those who have come into personal contact with Mrs. Eddy. Between 1875 and 1888 many of Mrs. Eddy's students left her because in her lectures and conversation she dwelt more upon the malign power of mesmerism than upon the salutary power of truth. In her contributions to the Journal during those years she frequently took up Animal Magnetism; she tells her followers over and over again that she will denounce it, and that she will not be silenced. For several years there was a regular department in the Journal with the caption "Animal Magnetism," but the crimes which were charged to mesmerists were by no means confined to this department. "Also they have dominion over our bodies, and over our cattle, at their pleasure, and we are in great distress," the Journal again and again affirms.

Poverty a False Belief

Mrs. Eddy surmounts economics as easily as she does physics and chemistry and physiology. Poverty is only a form of "error," a false belief. It can be abolished as readily as sin or disease or old age. She advertised the first edition of "Science and Health" as a book that "affords an opportunity to acquire a profession by which you can accumulate a fortune." "In the early history of Christian Science," Mrs. Eddy says, "among my thousands of students few were wealthy. Now, Christian Scientists are not indigent; and their comfortable fortunes are acquired by healing mankind morally, physically, and spiritually." Her healers should be well paid, she says. "Christian Science demonstrates that the patient who pays what he is able to pay, is more apt to recover than he who withholds a slight equivalent for health." In Mrs. Eddy's book[12] she publishes a long testimonial from a man who relates how Christian Science has helped him in his business.

This view of poverty has been generally accepted among Mrs. Eddy's followers. One contributor to the Journal writes: "We were demonstrating over a lack of means, which we had learned was just as much a claim of error to be overcome with truth as ever sickness or sin was."[13]

Another contributor writes: "The lack of means is a lupine ghost sired by the same spectre as the lack of health, and both must be met and put to flight by the same mighty weapons of our spiritual warfare."[14]

In the files of the Journal there are many reports of the material prosperity of individual Christian Scientists. It is an evidence of "at-oneness" with God to prosper in business just as it is to overcome disease.

In the Journal of September, 1904, a contributor says:

"Is it reasonable to believe, as we have believed, that popular fancy, whims, climate, the state of politics, any or all of a hundred lawless elements, are able to ruin a man's business while he stands by and doesn't know enough even to make an intelligent protest?"

Government, civilization, and even "climate" are demonstrated to be unreal, but the reality and importance of "business" is never questioned, and that each and every Christian Scientist should get on in the world remains a matter of indubitable moment, even to Mrs. Eddy herself.

Mrs. Eddy's Views on Marriage

Among the many incidental ideas which Mrs. Eddy has added to Quimbyism are her theory that the Godhead is more feminine than masculine, and her qualified disapproval of matrimony. Quimby himself had a large family and saw nothing unspiritual in marriage. In defining the real purpose of marriage Mrs. Eddy says nothing about children; "to happify existence by constant intercourse with those adapted to elevate it, is the true purpose of marriage." In her chapter on marriage she says: "The scientific morale of marriage is spiritual unity.... Proportionately as human generation ceases, the unbroken links of eternal harmonious being will be spiritually discerned."

In her chapter called "Wedlock" in Miscellaneous Writings (1897) Mrs. Eddy, after a vague and evasive discussion of the subject, squarely puts the question: "Is marriage nearer right than celibacy? Human knowledge inculcates that it is, while Science indicates that it is not." In the same chapter she further says: "Human nature has bestowed on a wife the right to become a mother; but if the wife esteems not this privilege, by mutual consent, exalted and increased affections, she may win a higher."

Mrs. Eddy apparently believes that Jesus Christ taught us to ignore family relations: "Jesus acknowledged no ties of the flesh. He said: 'Call no man your father upon the earth; for one is your father which is in heaven.' Again he asked: 'Who is my mother, and who are my brethren but they who will do the will of my father?' We have no record of his calling any man by the name of father."

Future of Christian Science

Whoever has watched the amazing growth of the Christian Science sect must feel some curiosity as to its future. Mrs. Eddy's followers are by no means the only people who are trying to meet, by suggestive treatment, nervous diseases and the many functional disorders which result from overwork, worry, and discouragement. The foremost neurologists of all countries are employing more and more this suggestive method which is the essential reality in Christian Science healing. The followers of the "New Thought" school apply this principle in their own way, and the hundreds of unaffiliated "mind curists" and "mental healers" are each applying it in ways more or less honest and legitimate.

In October, 1906, Dr. Elwood Worcester and Dr. Samuel McComb, the rector and the associate rector of the Emmanuel (Episcopal) Church of Boston, organized the Emmanuel Church Health Class, for the treatment of nervous disorders. Believing that, as Professor William James has said, "the sovereign cure for worry is religious faith," the workers at Emmanuel Church have been endeavoring to cure nervous disorders by putting the patient at peace with himself. Every patient is examined by a physician, and if the root of his disorder proves to be nervous (hysteria, alcoholism, a drug habit, insomnia, or any one of the many forms of neurasthenia) he is admitted into the Health Class for psycho-therapeutical treatment. Here he is encouraged to unburden himself of the distress or perplexity which haunts him, and is given the kind of suggestive treatment which seems best adapted to his disorder. Dr. Worcester studied psychology under Wundt, in Germany, and taught it for six years at Lehigh University. Dr. McComb studied psychology at Oxford. The records of the Emmanuel Health Class show that of the 178 cases treated between March, 1907, and November, 1907, the condition of seventy-five patients has been improved, forty-eight have not been helped at all, while in fifty-five cases the result is unknown.[15]

Mrs. Eddy's Opposition to the Mind Cure Movement

Mrs. Eddy and her followers have given a demonstration too great to be overlooked, of the fact that many ills which the sufferer believes entirely physical can be reached and eradicated by "ministering to a mind diseased," by persuading the sick man continually to suggest to himself ideas of health and hope and happiness and usefulness, instead of brooding upon the emptiness and unanswered needs of his life or upon his failing physical powers. Mrs. Eddy's sect, more than any other one of the cults which believe in and practise this method of bettering the patient's physical condition through his mind, has forced the most hide-bound medical practitioners to take account of this old but newly applied force in therapeutics.

But what is Mrs. Eddy's own attitude toward the general awakening to the value of psycho-therapeutics in the treatment of human diseases? She declares that every kind of mind cure and suggestive treatment except her own is dangerous and harmful. As one of Mrs. Eddy's students wrote in the Christian Science Journal, September, 1901, "The loyal Christian Scientist knows that neither he nor his patient should read or study the books of any other author than those of our beloved Leader in order to learn the Science of the Christ truth, which she is teaching and demonstrating to this age."

Mrs. Eddy's own editorials in the Journal are never so bitter as when she is attacking the mental healers who do not practise her own copyrighted variety of mind cure. Recently the Christian Science Sentinel of January 18, 1908, stated that Mrs. Eddy cannot countenance the work done at the Emmanuel Church. Mr. Archibald McClellan, the editor of that publication, published an article entitled "No Christian Psychology." He says: "Christian Psychology is equivalent to Christian phrenology, physiology and mythology, whereas Jesus predicted and demonstrated Christian healing on the basis of Spirit, God. He never complicated Spirit with matter, etc.... Her teachings (Mrs. Eddy's) show further that she cannot consistently endorse as Christianity the two distinctly contradictory statements and points of view contained in the term 'Christian psychology'—otherwise Christian materialism."

Mrs. Eddy holds that any system of healing which at all takes account of, or admits physical structure, is not Christian.

Mrs. Eddy's endeavor has been to convert a universal principle into a personal property. And she has gone a wonderfully long way toward doing it. Thousands of people believe that they owe their health and happiness to a healing principle which was revealed by God to Mrs. Eddy and by Mrs. Eddy to mankind; that since the ministry of Jesus Christ upon earth no one of the human race has understood this principle except Mrs. Eddy, and that she is the only human being now alive who fully understands it; that when she dies her works alone will stand between the world and darkness.

But all the while that Mrs. Eddy was energetically copyrighting, and pruning, and expelling, and disciplining, that other stream which came from Quimby, through Dr. Evans and through Julius Dresser and his wife, was slowly and quietly doing its work.[16] Mind Cure and New Thought grew up side by side with Christian Science. As organizations they were not nearly so effective, and their ranks, like Mrs. Eddy's, were often darkened by the adventuress and the battered soldier of fortune. But the Mental healers and the New Thought healers treated the sick on exactly the same principle which Mrs. Eddy's successful healers employed.

As to the future of Mrs. Eddy's church, her own attitude toward every attempt to investigate and to apply liberally the principle of mental healing, seems to determine that. It has been possible for her, during her own lifetime, absolutely to prohibit preaching, thinking, independent writing,—investigation or inquiry of any sort—in her churches. But after her death, when that compelling hand is withdrawn, either the church must renew itself from among the ignorant and superstitious, as Mormonism has done, or it must permit its members to use their minds. Those who use their minds will discover that Christian Science is only one method of applying a general truth, and that it is a method which is hampered by a great deal that is illogical and absurd; that if Christian Science, as Mrs. Eddy has promulgated it, were universally believed and practised, it would be the revolt of a species against its own physical structure; against its relation to its natural physical environment, against the needs of its own physical organism, against the perpetuation of its kind. The moment a Christian Scientist realizes that the helpful and hopeful principle of his religion can operate quite independently of all the inconsequential theories which Mrs. Eddy has attached to it, that moment he is, of course, lost to Mrs. Eddy. Mrs. Eddy's church organization stands as a sort of dyke between the general principle of mind cure and Mrs. Eddy's very empirical, violent, and temperamental interpretation of that principle. It is the future of psycho-therapeutics that will determine the future of Christian Science. If "Mind Cure," "Christian Psychology," and regular physicians offer the benefits of suggestive treatment in a more rational and direct way than does Christian Science, Mrs. Eddy's church will find in them very formidable competition. On the other hand, if Christian Scientists throw down their barriers and join the general mind-cure movement, and the two branches of Quimbyism meet, then half of Mrs. Eddy's life-work is lost. The labor of her days has been to keep these two streams apart; to prove one the true and the other the false. Her efforts to stem the progress of all other schools of mental healing have been secondary only to her efforts to advance her own. Yet, unconsciously and against her own wish, she has been the most effective instrument in promoting the interest of the whole movement.

On the theoretical side, Mrs. Eddy's contribution to mental healing has been, in the main, fallacious, pseudodoxal, and absurd, but upon the practical side she has been wonderfully efficient. New movements are usually launched and old ideas are revivified, not through the efforts of a group of people, but through one person. These dynamic personalities have not always conformed to our highest ideals; their effectiveness has not always been associated with a large intelligence or with nobility of character. Not infrequently it has been true of them—as it seems to be true of Mrs. Eddy—that their power was generated in the ferment of an inharmonious and violent nature. But, for practical purposes, it is only fair to measure them by their actual accomplishment and by the machinery they have set in motion.

THE END



HER FRUITS

BY

MARY ELEANOR ROBERTS

These are her fruits, kindness and gentleness, And gratefully we take them at her hands; Patience she has, and pity for distress, And love that understands.

Ah, ask not how such rich reward was won, How sharp the harrow in the former years, Or mellowed in what agony of sun, Or watered with what tears.



THE KEY TO THE DOOR

BY FIELDING BALL

ILLUSTRATIONS BY WALTER JACK DUNCAN

"There was the Door to which I found no Key; There was the Veil through which I might not see. Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee There was—and then no more of Thee and Me."

The postmaster was lounging in an open window, cleaning his fingernails with his pocket-knife, as Allison went into the post-office. He rose with some show of animation at sight of the tall, boyish figure in the doorway.

"I got a hired girl for you all right, Mr. Allison," he said, advancing to meet him. "Used to work down to Webb City, in a restaurant, but got tired of it—hours too hard. She's a good cook, and she knows how to get things on the table so they look real nice—I knew that would mean considerable to you folks."

He went on to dwell at length upon the girl's good points, becoming more nervously demonstrative in his praise as he found that Allison's face reflected none of his enthusiasm, but remained unexpectedly impassive and non-committal.

Allison interrupted at the first opportunity.

"You have been very kind, Mr. Barbour," he said, with impersonal civility. "Would you be so good as to get me my mail?"

He took the letters which the man handed him and walked out without giving him another glance.

Just outside of the door he met Jim Brown, man-of-all-work at the station. Allison himself was station agent. Allison looked at Jim as he passed with such a cold, unswerving gaze that in spite of himself the other dropped his eyes. Jim had been present at the interview between Billings and Allison that morning; Allison knew that he was coming now to tell the postmaster about it. The young man set his lips hard at the thought of some of the things he had done during the last two weeks, when he had been full of glad confidence in himself and in this invention of his—this brake which Billings had told him an hour ago was not worth the stuff of which it was made. The recountal of his performance would doubtless afford much entertainment to the pair in the post-office. Just yesterday he had asked the postmaster to find for him, if possible, a capable maid-servant, and had said, without thinking anything in particular about it, that he would pay a satisfactory girl five dollars a week. Five dollars a week—it had not seemed much to him; he had been amused by Barbour's evident astonishment. To-day he saw more reason in it.... Then there was that perfume for Gertrude—he should have to countermand his order for that. He had no choice in the matter, he told himself, with bitter resentment that a paltry nine dollars should mean so much to him. In spite of the fact that he had come to this decision before he reached the drug store, he did not go in, but walked past with his head in the air, looking neither to right nor to left. He felt as though every one must already know of the morning's experience; and he was fearful of meeting eyes alight with cynical understanding.

The postmaster and Jim watched the young man from the post-office door as he made his way up the one hilly street of the little town. The soldierly precision of his carriage and gait, together with a certain air of distinction about his clothes, made him seem singularly out of keeping with all about him—the narrow, stony road, the straggling white houses on each side of it, the unkempt yards, the neglected trees, the dilapidated sidewalks half hidden by an amazing growth of dog-fennel.

"You'd know somep'n had gone wrong by the way he had his head reared back, wouldn't you?" Jim asked with a smile on his dark face.

He had just finished telling Barbour of what had happened that morning. Several days before, Allison had got word from the railroad company that some time this week they would send a man to tell him what offer they were prepared to make for the brake on which he had been working for so many weeks, and had finally finished; and this morning Billings had put in his appearance. The brake was practically good for nothing, he assured Allison—certainly not worth a cent to the company; and he told him the reasons why this was so.

He went on to say, however, that he felt sorry for Allison,—sorry for that nice little wife of his,—Jim smiled grimly as he repeated the condescending phrase,—that he knew they were having a mighty hard time of it. Sixty dollars a month was not enough for a single man to live on decently, much less a married one; and the way in which Allison had been brought up made it harder. He didn't mean to criticize Allison's father—he didn't believe in criticizing the dead—but he certainly should not bring up his son in such a way that he couldn't make a living for himself if necessary. You never could tell what was going to happen in this world; Allison wasn't the first gay young fellow who had grown up not expecting ever to have to do a day's work, and then all of a sudden had found himself glad to get almost any sort of a job. Well, as he said, he was sorry for Allison, and ready to help him out a little. He meant to see to it that Allison got something out of this brake of his—a couple of hundred dollars, perhaps; of course, two hundred dollars wasn't a great deal; it wouldn't mean much to him—Billings—but it would probably mean considerable to Allison.

"What did Mr. Allison say?" the postmaster asked.

"Never changed face. Set there starin' at Billings with those darned cool eyes o' his that look's if they'd never blink 'f a cannon went off under his very nose—waited till Billings got good and done, 'n' then said with that high 'n' mighty air of his, f'r all the world's if he was speakin' to some poor, half-witted Swede: 'Two hundred dollars doesn't mean as much to me as you think, Mr. Billings.' Then he stopped a minute, 'n' went on in a little diff'rent tone, 'You needn't concern yourself any further about me and my troubles'—'n' that had very much the sound of 'I'll make kindling-wood of you if you do!' Then he looks at his watch. 'I've given you all the time I can spare,' says he; and with that he swings around 'n' begins looking over some papers on his desk. Billings reddened up a little—coughed 'n' wriggled around in his chair, 'n' tried to get up courage to say somethin' more—but he simply didn't darst. He went off finally lookin' sort o' cheap. Mist' Allison never give him another glance, no more'n 's if he was that dog o' yours."

The postmaster was silent for a minute or two. Then he turned to Jim. "I'm not particularly sorry to see Billings get left," he said. "Still, it might be just as well for Mr. Allison if he'd have kept on the right side of Billings from the start. There's no use talking, he's got an awfully uppish way with him, that boy."

Jim nodded an emphatic assent. Along with other smaller grievances there still rankled in his mind the memory of how, when Allison had first come as station agent to the little town, a year ago now, he had one day asked Jim if he did not suppose that the nice-looking girl who had passed their house with Jim the Sunday before could be induced to come and work for them. Allison had asked the question in all innocence, not dreaming that this unshaven young man in blue seersucker shirt and greasy trousers considered himself in every way Allison's equal, and was as much affronted by this suggestion as Allison would have been by one of the same sort. Jim could not forgive him for it—any admiration he felt for Allison was invariably tempered by resentful remembrance.

"It's about time he woke up to the fact that he doesn't have a father worth two millions behind him these days," Barbour went on. "Extravagant! Lord, he never stops to ask what a thing costs before getting it, as long as he has money in his pockets. Went into the book-store the other afternoon to get some magazines—carried off about everything Henry had in the place. Three dollars and fifteen cents his bill was. Never thinks, when he's buying anything in the way of shirts or ties, of getting less than half a dozen at a time—s'pose he hasn't found out you can buy them any other way. And his laundry bills—guess he about runs the laundry. And just yesterday he was telling me in the most off-hand way that he would pay five dollars a week to a hired girl. Five dollars a week! I could hardly believe my ears. But I guess he's gone back on that." The postmaster smiled sourly.

The young man of whom they were talking was almost at the top of the hill by this time. So far he had met few people; and those whom he had met had not forced any formal recognition from him. But as he passed Mrs. Jennings, she called out a greeting that could not be ignored. Gertrude had stopped once to talk to her and to admire her collection of shells; and since then every noon and night he found her waiting here by her gate to speak to him; and she invariably asked the same question about his wife, always in the same tone, always with the same inflection. The meeting with her had become one of the frightfully unvarying things of his day. As he walked on now, he saw stretching before him an interminable vista of days, weeks, years—one deadly sameness of hard work, long hours, scanty pay, poor living, growing debts—and inextricably mixed up with it all, this dreary, gaunt black figure, waiting always for him at the top of the hill.... He had not realized what it meant to him, the success of his invention—how much he was depending on it. He felt now as he might if, moving blindly through a dark passage, hoping any minute to see a glimmer of light ahead, an outlet into the open air, he had run full into a locked door—a door to which he had no key.

The thought of going home to his wife brought no comfort with it. They had long ago ceased to be honest with each other, Gertrude and he; their attempts to make the best of a sorry situation had in the end become a barrier which held them apart. Gertrude would not admit that she was ever tired, or lonesome, or discouraged; would find no fault with their poor little house, their scanty means, her unaccustomed duties. She never spoke of the past any more, nor of the future, lest in that there might be an implied criticism of the present; she was resolutely, unvaryingly, aggressively contented. But this contentment was too constant, too uniform, like false color on a woman's cheek. He sometimes wished she would throw pretense to the winds—would put her head on his shoulder, and sob and cry, and confess that she wished she were dead—or that she would upbraid him, reproach him, call him some of the hard names he called himself. But she was insistently cheerful; and there was nothing for him to do, in the face of this, but play an awkward second to her, ignore his aching back, his sore hands, his throbbing head, and keep a resolute silence as to all that happened to vex and humiliate and perplex and hurt him. It was not always easy; to-day he was conscious that he was walking more and more slowly as he drew near the house.

How poor and forlorn it looked in this glare of light! During these last weeks his thoughts had turned often to that stately house where he had lived for nineteen years—its green, close-clipped lawn glistening under a perpetual play of water, its great beds of white and green and cardinal foliage plants, its shut-in porches, its awnings, its flowering shrubs, its vines, its heavy iron fence. He looked with bitter attentiveness at the dingy frame cottage he was approaching, noticing each homely detail—the dish-towels spread on the bushes in the back yard, the mop hanging by the door, the kerosene can under the step, the lean hen scuttling away under the currant bushes, the vegetable garden lying parched and dry along the fence. There was a small artificial mound of stones at one side of the house, with a somewhat scanty growth of portulaca springing from its top. The last occupant of the house was responsible for that adornment. Allison wondered how they had happened to leave it there so long. That mound of stones—all his hopes might have been buried under it and he could not have hated it more. It stood, somehow, for all that chafed and irritated him here—the moral, mental, and physical stuntedness of the people—their petty ambitions, petty jealousies, petty quarrels, petty virtues.

Allison was seized with a sudden vague fear as he saw on the kitchen window-sill, just where he had left it at seven this morning, the package which Gertrude had promised to take to Mr. Fulton as soon as she had finished the breakfast dishes. He noticed almost at the same instant that the kitchen door was open; countless flies were sailing in and out; and there on the cellar door, in the blazing sunlight, was the morning's milk, thick and sour by this time. He quickened his steps—made his way hurriedly through the kitchen and dining-room, noticing, as he went, various signs of disorder. The kitchen fire was out—the floor unswept; the coffee he had knocked over when he had built the fire this morning lay where it had fallen: the room was full of its pungent odor. On the dining-room table were the remnants of breakfast, the oatmeal dry and stiff, the butter melted down to a thin oil. In the front room he found Gertrude, bending a flushed face over something she was writing. She gave a start of fright as he came in—then got very red.

"I sat down to write a little of that play I was telling you about last night"—she was picking up her papers with frantic haste as she spoke—"and I had no idea it was getting so late." She cast an appalled glance around the room, and hurried out to begin clearing off the table, making a great clatter with the dishes in her excitement and haste.



Allison stood for a minute looking after her wearily. Her manner hurt him. More than once, in days gone by, he had told her fondly that when she married him she should do nothing but what she liked to do—if she chose, she might work on her little dialogues and fairy stories from morning till night. The air of frightened apology which she wore—this servile haste—pained and irritated him. He threw himself into a chair and began mechanically to look over the mail which the postmaster had handed him. A week ago he had written to an Eastern firm asking for a catalogue of the refrigerators they made. Here it was—bulky, imposing, abounding in alluring pictures of tile-lined refrigerators filled with game, fish, fruit, wine. He found he could buy their smallest and most inexpensive refrigerator, "built especially to supply a demand for low-priced goods,"—so the advertisement ran—for forty-five dollars. He dropped the book, and turned to his other letter. It was from a great retail dry-goods house, and was in answer to a request he had made for samples of dotted swiss—he had thought he would like to get Gertrude a dress such as she had worn when he first knew her. The samples were sent, and along with them a letter expressing pleasure at being able to serve him, and a desire further to accommodate him whenever possible; its extreme deference and respect was like a calculated sarcasm. He pushed it away from him and leaned back in his chair, looking about the room with a curious stare, as a convict, who has just heard that his sentence is for life, might gaze at the walls of his cell. It was a low-ceiled room, with an uneven floor, cheap woodwork, painted in an unsuccessful imitation of natural wood, and walls hung with faded paper of an indeterminate pattern and even more indeterminate color. To-day it was in greater confusion than usual, with white dust thick on table and chair, a window-shade askew, the music-rack disarranged, and a plate of grape-skins which Allison had left last night on the piano still standing there. But it was not the disorder which irritated Allison most, nor the signs of poverty, but the fact that the poverty was so genteel, so self-respecting, so determined to make the best of things and present a brave front to the world. The kerosene lamp had a shade of red, crinkled tissue-paper—the cheap net curtains were arranged with the utmost elaboration—a rug was artfully laid down in such a way as almost to cover the square of zinc on which the stove stood in the winter time, and all of Gertrude's photographs were placed with a view to concealing various defects and deficiencies. His loathing for all this was intensified by a memory of vast rooms stretching out one after the other, hushed and cool, with gracious shadows lending their mystery and romance to everything. With sudden restlessness he rose, and walked over to the window; but the smell of dust and dry, dead vegetation smothered him. Gertrude had raked the long, sparse brown grass all in one direction; it had a grotesque look of having been combed.

He seized his hat, and went to get Mr. Fulton's package from the window-sill. He had barely turned toward the gate, however, when his wife hurried out, remonstrating, apologizing, with an urgent hand on his arm. "It is important that Mr. Fulton should get these papers to-day," he said stiffly. It did not really matter whether Mr. Fulton got the roll of agricultural papers to-day, to-morrow, or next week; but Allison felt the necessity for doing something, it did not much matter what, to crush down his growing despair; and this was the only thing which suggested itself. Gertrude was persistent, however, in her entreaties that he come back; it was frightfully hot, and he already looked tired; she would take the papers to Mr. Fulton right after luncheon. He yielded at last, from sheer languidness, and came silently into the house. Gertrude's moist face, her loud, anxious voice, her warm, clinging hand, were exceedingly disagreeable to him—so much so that finally the desire to escape them became more importunate than any other.

He was again standing by the window, gazing out, when his wife came into the dining-room to set the table. He did not turn—gave no sign of seeing her.

"What are you thinking about, Philip?" she asked presently, with an effort to make her question sound casual.

"I am not thinking—at least I am trying not to," Allison answered, in a somewhat strained, unnatural voice. Why would she not leave him alone? Could she not see that he did not wish to talk?

"What was the last thing that you were thinking about before you stopped?" Gertrude spoke with painstaking gaiety.

Would she always keep up this dissimulation? Allison asked himself. For his part, he was done with it!

"I was thinking that this place was fit for a dog-kennel—and for nothing else!" he said. All the bitterness that was eating out his heart was in the low words.

"It does look pretty bad to-day," Gertrude acquiesced, after an appreciable interval of time.

"To-day!" Allison gave a hard, contemptuous little laugh. "As though it ever looked any other way!"

Gertrude did not reply.... When Allison noticed her silence, and turned to look at her, he saw that there was a peculiar light in her eyes, a red flush over all her face; after a moment's dazed wonder, he realized that she had misunderstood him—had misunderstood him utterly. His thoughts had been on the sagging floors, the cheap furniture, the marred wall-paper, the miserable ugliness and poverty of the house, and everything in it; but she had seen in his remark only scorn for her housekeeping, irritation at the room's untidiness. She was very angry. As Allison realized this, a sudden fierce satisfaction possessed him. Now at last she would speak out, without pretence, without reserve! He should hear the truth at last.



But the wrathful look died out of her eyes. She began arranging the knives and forks, looking suddenly old, and steady, and sober.

"I'm not much of a housekeeper," she said, quietly.

"No, you're not." Allison made his tone as ugly as possible—and waited. Surely she would turn upon him now, overwhelm him with bitter words!

She made no answer of any kind, however, but turned and hurried into the kitchen, striking her arm clumsily against one side of the door as she passed through, as though she had not seen very well. He heard her moving rapidly about, getting his luncheon. She brought it in with her head in the air and her lips compressed. The coffee was muddy, the steak burned, the creamed potatoes scorched—she had been having bad luck. Allison ate every scrap of what she brought him. He did not dare look at her—did not dare ask her to forgive him. What right had he to do that? He lingered on the steps some time before starting for the station, fussing with his cuff, pulling his hat into shape, breaking off from the tree at the corner of the house the branch Gertrude had complained was in her way. His wife usually followed him to the door to tell him good-by; but to-day she was sweeping the dining-room vigorously, singing the while a very gay and cheerful tune. It was one to which they had often danced together in the old days; at the same moment at which he realized it, the song stopped, as though Gertrude had been silenced by the same memory that had come to him. He whistled tentatively; but she did not answer, though she was near enough to hear, as he knew from the sound of her broom.

Allison went about his work that afternoon with a droop to his head, and a dullness about his dark eyes, which Jim noticed with vague discomfort, and which made him wish heartily that he had not confided to the postmaster the story of Billings and the brake. He had quarreled with Gertrude—everything else seemed insignificant to Allison beside that. He had quarreled with Gertrude—Gertrude, who had been so brave, so uncomplaining, so patient, so forbearing—had gone away from her with the shadow of a misunderstanding between them. He kept repeating to himself everything he had said and everything she had said, recalling every tone and gesture. He wondered how he could have felt such a shrinking dislike as she stood with her hand—her poor little scarred hand!—on his arm, begging him to come back, to let her take the papers to Mr. Fulton. How sweet she had been—how sweet! And he!

He started for home a little earlier than usual—Jim urged him to go, with a certain rough friendliness, saying that he could look out for things at the station. On his way home Allison went to the post-office, hoping to get a letter for Gertrude from her mother or sister, and he told the postmaster very humbly and simply why he had not felt like talking this noon, and of the fact that he could not really afford to pay five dollars a week for a maid. It was very strange, but after he had begun, it was not at all hard to go on. He wondered vaguely how he could have thought the postmaster a meddlesome, malicious, vulgar young man; he seemed very sensible and friendly and respectful to-night.

Mrs. Jennings stood at the top of the hill, gaunt and black as usual; somehow Allison did not feel the usual resentment. He stopped to speak to her with unwonted warmth; and when, encouraged by his manner, she began to talk about Gertrude, and what a pretty girl, and what a smart girl, and what a sweet girl she was, he felt a sudden kindness for the old lady, and accepted almost demonstratively the bunch of magenta and orange vinnias she gave him to take to his wife.

As Allison went into the house, he noticed signs of a vigorous cleaning. The back steps had been scrubbed—were still wet; the kitchen floor was as white as the rough, dark boards could be made; the dining-room table was set with their finest table-cloth and prettiest dishes, and was gay with yellow flowers; fresh white curtains, breathing out sweetness, hung at the windows. A note was pinned to the corner of the table.

"If you should get home before I do," it ran, "this is to tell you that I have gone to Mr. Fulton's with those papers I promised to take right after luncheon—I forgot all about them till just now. I'll be back in three-quarters of an hour sure; it's half-past five now. Supper's all ready now but making the coffee. Be sure and wait."

He smoothed the hurried scrawl out tenderly, feeling as if something hard and cold in his left side had melted with a sudden gush of warmth. Back in three-quarters of an hour! He laughed aloud at the sanguineness of it. Why, it took him forty minutes to go to Mr. Fulton's and back! And the idea of telling him to be sure and wait! The little goose! Did she think he would take himself off in a temper at not finding her, as he had once months ago? He went out to the kitchen to put his flowers in water, and to finish slicing an egg over the top of the bowl of salad there—Gertrude had evidently just begun to do it when the package outside the window caught her eye. He put on some water for the coffee, and brought in an armful of wood; then he strolled to the gate to wait for his wife. The neighbor's two-year-old baby came staggering down the walk in front of the house. Allison caught up the child in his arms, and lifted it to the top of the gate-post, beside him. This was the little girl for whom Gertrude had been making a dress the other day; she had looked very shocked—Gertrude—when he had asked her if she proposed to make clothes for all the dirty little brats in the neighborhood, and had told him with some dignity that Dolly was a very pretty baby, and was kept as clean as could be expected. Dolly was a pretty baby. He tightened the arm that was about her a little, and began to talk clumsy baby-talk to her; her mother looked on with a pleased smile from her front door. The sun was setting, and a strange bright peace was on everything.

Suddenly Allison's eyes were caught by an unaccustomed sight—a crowd of people, men, women, and children, advancing down the road, slowly, steadily, and silently—very silently. He surveyed them curiously, ignorantly. Suddenly a man spoke to the one next him—Allison saw the dip of his head—and almost at the same instant a child—a twelve-year-old girl—put up her hands to shade her eyes, staring intently at Allison, and then with a loud shriek ran wildly, blindly, in the other direction. And then Allison knew that this silent company meant disaster to him.

They dragged him away before he caught more than a glimpse of what they had in their midst—the limp, white-faced thing in the silly pink dress he had liked. She had started home by the short way, they told him—the short way over the old bridge—the bridge that every one knew was not safe. And how it happened no one could say—perhaps she had stumbled and caught hold of the rotten railing, and it had given under her hand; at any rate they had found her in the dry river-bottom, thirty feet below. He looked at them very calmly as they finished. "She is dead," he said quietly, "there is no need to tell me that." And then, suddenly, without a cry or any warning, he toppled over against the man nearest him.

But she was not dead. He came out of his delirium and fever three weeks later to find her limping around the room, looking a little pale and tired, but very pretty in some sort of ruffled white dress, with her hair done up in the puffs and rolls he had always liked. People had been very good, she told him when he was strong enough to listen and understand. The doctor had said that he could eat eggs before he could eat anything else—so everybody had been sending fresh eggs. Mary said she was going to buy an incubator and start to raising chickens—they couldn't eat half the eggs that were sent in, even if they ate nothing but custard. Mary was the pretty girl that they had seen walking with Mr. Brown one Sunday, and had thought would be a nice person to have around. She was going to stay with them all winter; Gertrude was going to teach her German and music, and she was going to teach Gertrude how to cook. She was doing all the work just now, she and the neighbors. Mrs. Ferry came in every morning to scrub the kitchen and black the stove. They said Gertrude must keep her hands nice—Philip had seemed more worried about her hands than about anything else, all the time he was sick. Did he see how soft and white they were? She had been washing them in buttermilk—the doctor's wife had suggested that—and putting some sort of cream on them that Mr. Gilson, the young man who clerked in the drug store, had sent up by Mr. Brown. Mr. Brown had been so kind—it had been he who had sat up with Philip when his fever was at its worst—he had chopped all the ice that they had used from first to last. He was out in the back yard now, fixing—but there, that was to be a surprise.

Allison lay very still, smoothing his wife's hand, and looking out through the open door at the dry grass of the yard, browner, dustier than ever, and at the portulaca waving on top of the pyramid of stones. He could hear Jim's whistle as he moved about the yard; some one at the back door was talking to Mary in a hushed, eager undertone; over on her porch Dolly was singing happily, sinking her voice to a mere murmur now and then at a low remonstrance from within the house. It all made a sort of accompaniment to Gertrude's happy talk.

Suddenly she stopped, and leaned her cheek against his, with a little sigh. "Isn't it a nice world, dear?" she whispered.

He turned so that he could look into her eyes, and said, with a little tremble in his voice:

"It's a beautiful world!"



THE WAYFARERS

BY

MARY STEWART CUTTING

AUTHOR OF "LITTLE STORIES OF COURTSHIP," "LITTLE STORIES OF MARRIED LIFE," ETC.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ALICE BARBER STEPHENS

XIX

"Slipped through your fingers like that! Like a—" Leverich's words were not fit for print. He had been away for a couple of days, and now sat tilted back in his office chair, a heavy, leather-covered thing not meant for tilting, his face puffed with anger, his mouth snarling—a wild beast balked of his prey. His eyes, ferociously insolent, dwelt on Justin, who, fine and keen and smiling a little, sat opposite him. Brute anger never had any effect on Justin but to give him a contemptuous, chill self-possession.

"You're sure the agreement's made?"

"Cater's been sending new consignments as fast as they could go for the past three days; he's loaded up with machines."

Leverich swore again. "Confounded fools, not to have made terms with Hardanger first! If we'd only known! If there was only some way to put a spoke in the wheel, even yet!"

"Oh, I've got the spoke, easily enough," said Justin indifferently. "The only trouble is, I can't use it."

"Got a spoke! Why in heaven didn't you say that before?" Leverich came down on the front legs of his chair with a force that sent it rolling ahead on its casters. "What are you sitting here for? What do you mean by telling me that you can't use it?"

"Just what I say. But it's not worth talking about."

"See here, Alexander, could you get our machine in now instead of his?"

"I suppose I might."

"And you're not going to do it?"

"I can't, I tell you, Leverich. The information came to me in such a way that I can't touch it."

"'The information—' It's something damaging to do with the machine?"

Justin drummed with his fingers on the desk without answering.

"You have proof?"

"What's the sense of talking, Leverich? Proof or no, I tell you, I can't use it. This isn't any funny business; you can see that. Don't you suppose, if I could use it, that I would? But there are some things a man can't do. At any rate, I can't. And that settles it."

Heaven knows he had gone over the matter insistently enough in the last few days, since the combination had been unwillingly given into his hands, but always with the foregone conclusion. The devil, as a rule, doesn't actively try to tempt us to evil: he simply confuses us, so that we are kept from using our reason. But this time he had no field for action. To use secret information against Cater, that could never have been had but for Cater's kindness to him in helping him to those bars in time of need, was first, last, and every time impossible to Justin Alexander. It was vain for argument to suggest that this very deed of kindness had worked his disaster—the fact remained the same. He might do other things; he might do worse things: this thing he could not do—not though the refusal worked his own ruin, not though Cater's ruin with Hardanger was insured anyway, but too late for the typometer to profit by it. Even if the typometer could by some means keep afloat until that day arrived, it would take a couple of years for such a timing-machine to regain its prestige in a foreign country.

Justin had no excess of sentiment; no quixotic impulse urged him to go and tell Cater what he had learned. It was Cater's business to look after his end of the game. If the price of material or labor was too cheap, he must know that there was something wrong with it. The stream of Justin's mind ran clear in spite of that feeling of sharp practice toward himself—nay, because of it; it was impossible to use the weapon that a former kindness had placed in his hand. He looked at Leverich now with an expression which the latter quieted himself to meet. This was a situation, not for bluster and rage, but to be competently grappled with.

"How about your obligations? Do you call this fair dealing to us, Alexander? There's Lewiston's note; once this deal was settled, we would have paid that, as you know. But it's out of the question as things stand. We'll have to get our money out the best way we can. If this is your sense of honor—to sacrifice your friends! See here, Alexander, let's talk this out. When it comes to talking of ruin, no man can afford to stand on terms. We didn't put you into the typometer business on any kindergarten principles—it isn't to form your character. What we did, we did for profit; and if the profit isn't there, we get out. We've no objection to doing a kindness for any one, if we can do it and make a profit; but it stands to reason that we're not in the business for philanthropy any more than for kindergartening. We liked you, and we were willing to give you a place in the game if you could run it to suit us. But we don't consider any scheme that doesn't make money. What doesn't make money has to go. Profit, profit, profit—that's what every sane man puts first, and there's no justice in losing a chance to make it. What you lose, another man takes. If you make another man's wife and children better off, you stint your own. You've got to consider a question on all sides. No woman respects a man who can't make money; it's his everlasting business to make money, and she knows it. Your wife won't think much of your fine scruples if she's to go without for 'em. And, by the Lord, she's right! When you go into business, you've got to make up your mind to one of two things: you've either got to step hard on the necks of those below you, or you've got to lie down and let them wipe their feet on you."



Leverich had stopped at intervals for comment from Justin. Since none was offered, he went on, with the large and easy manner of one who feels the justice of his convictions: "No man ever accused me of being close. I'm free-handed, if I say it that shouldn't. I like to give, and I do give. If there's money wanted for charity, the committees know very well where to come. And my wife likes to give, too; her name's on the books of twenty charitable organizations. But we give out of money I've made by not being free-handed—by getting every last cent that belonged to me. You see, I don't leave my wife out of my calculations—any man's a fool that does. She's got the right to have as good as I can give her. I wouldn't talk like this to most men, Alexander, but between you and me it's different. It pays to keep your wife in a good humor, when you've got to go home after a hard day's work; you take a dissatisfied woman, and she'll make your home a hell. I know men—Great Scott! I don't know how they live!" He paused again. Justin did not answer. He sat with his head on his hand, looking, not at Leverich, but to one side of him.



"When I say I've made the money," continued Leverich, "I mean that I actually have made most of it—made it out of nothing! like the first chapter of Genesis. If a man has money to start with, he can add to it as easily as you can roll up a snowball. It's no credit to him. But I've had only my brains. I've seen money where other men couldn't, and nothing has stood in my way of getting to it. That's the whole secret of success. And my attitude's fair—you couldn't find a fairer. When one of your clerks falls sick, you pay him his full salary for three or four months till he's around again. I know! Well, I don't do any such stunts. When I was a clerk myself, I was on the sick-list once for three months, and nobody paid me. After the first month I was bounced, and I didn't expect anything else. I didn't expect any philanthropical business, and I don't give it. That's fair, isn't it? I don't give quarter, and I don't expect any. If I'm squeezed, I pay. I don't stand still in the middle of a deal and snivel about what I can do and what I can't do. I don't snivel about what you call moral obligations. I only recognize money obligations. Why, see here, Alexander," he broke off, "if you use the influence you spoke of, you don't have to tell me what it is—you don't have to tell anybody but Hardanger. Cater himself needn't know that you had anything to do with it."

"But I'd know," said Justin quietly.

Leverich lost his easy manner; his jaw protruded.

"Very well, then; it comes down to this: If you fail us now, out of any of your fool scruples toward that poor devil across the street,—who's bound to get the blood sucked out of him anyway,—you ruin your own prospects, and you try and cheat us out of the money we put up on you. By ——, if you see any honor in that, I don't."

"Mr. Leverich," said Justin, raising his head simply, with a steely gleam in his eyes that matched the other's, "when I try to cheat you or Lewiston or any man out of what has been put up on me, I'll give you leave to say what you please. At present I'll say good morning."



Leverich shrugged his shoulders and turned his back as he bent over his desk. Justin picked up his hat and went out, brushing, as he did so, against a dark, pleasant-faced man who had been sitting in the next room. Something in his face instantly conveyed to Justin the knowledge that the conversation he had just been engaged in had grown louder than the partition warranted. The next instant he recognized the man as a Mr. Warren, of Rondell & Co. Both men turned to look back at each other, and both bowed. The action had a certain definiteness in it, unwarranted by the slightness of the meeting. The next moment Justin was in the street.



The active clash of steel always roused the blood in him; he felt actively stronger for combat. He was competently apportioning toward Lewiston's note the different sums coming in this month. There were large bills to be paid to the typometer's credit by several firms, one of them Coneways'. Coneways represented the largest counted-in asset for the entire year—it was the backbone of the establishment. If it went to Lewiston, what would be left for the business? That could come next. Lewiston was first. Leverich and Martin would exact every penny of their principal after these intervening six months of the year were over. Well, let them! Lewiston's note was what he had to think of now.

All business undertakings, no matter how wild, how precarious, to the sense of the beholder, are started with confidence in their ultimate success; it is the one trite, universal reason for starting—that faith is the capital that all possess in common. Some of these doubtful ventures, while never really succeeding, do not really fail at once. They are always hard up, but they keep on, though gradually sinking lower all the time. Others seem to exist by the continuance of that first faith alone—a sheer optimism that keeps the courage alive and keen enough to seize hold of the slightest driftwood of opportunity, binding this flotsam into a raft that takes them triumphantly out on the high tide. For all the long drag, the anxiety, the physical strain, the harassment, failure in itself seemed as inherently impossible to Justin as that he should be stricken blind or lose the use of his limbs. He must think harder to find a way of accomplishment; that was all.

His step had its own peculiar ring in it as he left Leverich's, but it lost somewhat of its alertness as he turned down the street that led to the factory, unaltered, since his first coming to it, save for the transformation of the neglected house he had noticed then, with its gruesome interior, which had been turned into a freshly painted shop long ago. The effect of association is inexorable. There was not a corner, not a building, along that too familiar way, that was not hung with some thought of care. There were moments of such strong repulsion that he felt as if he couldn't turn down that street again—moments lately when to enter the factory with its red-brick-arched yawning mouth of a doorway occasioned a physical nausea—a foolish, womanish state which irritated him.

The mail brought him the usual miscellaneous assortment of orders and bills, and letters on minor points, and questions as to the typometer. The mail was rather apt to be encouraging in its suggestions of a large trade. Two letters this morning were full of enthusiastic encomium on the use of the machine. In spite of an enormous and long-outstanding bill for office stationery, insistently clamorous for payment—one of those bills looked upon as trifles until they suddenly become staggering—there was, after the mail, a general feeling of wielding the destiny of a large part of the world, where the typometer was a power.



A little woman whose husband, now dead, had been in his employ came in to get help in collecting his insurance; she was timid before Justin, deeply grateful for his kind and effective assistance. Two men came in, at different times, for advice and introductions to important people. A friend brought in a possible customer from the Sandwich Islands. There was all that aura of prosperity that has nothing to do with the payment of one's bills.

Justin took both the friend and the customer out to lunch, his agreeable sense of hospitality only dimmed by the disagreeable fact of its taking every cent of the five dollars he had expected to last for the week. He was "strapped." The luncheon took longer, also, than he had counted on its doing. The morning, begun well, seemed to lead up only to sordid and anxious details—a sense of non-accomplishment, induced also by small requisitions from different people, requiring cash from a cash-drawer that was usually empty.

It was a welcome relief to figure, with Harker's assistance, on the large sums coming in at the end of the month from Coneways. There were a hundred ways for them to go, but they were to go to Lewiston. Perhaps, after all, as Harker astutely suggested, Lewiston would be satisfied with a partial payment and extend the rest of the note. While they were still consulting, word was brought in that Mr. Lewiston was there.

Mr. Lewiston was a young man, small-featured, black-haired, smooth-shaven, and with an air of nattiness and fashion, set at odds at present by a very pale and anxious face and eager, dilated black eyes. He cut short Justin's greeting with the words: