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+Project Gutenberg's Life in the Iron-Mills, by Rebecca Harding Davis
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Life in the Iron-Mills
+
+Author: Rebecca Harding Davis
+
+Posting Date: July 27, 2008 [EBook #876]
+Release Date: April 1997
+Last Updated: March 4, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE IN THE IRON-MILLS ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+LIFE IN THE IRON-MILLS
+
+by Rebecca Harding Davis
+
+
+               “Is this the end?
+               O Life, as futile, then, as frail!
+               What hope of answer or redress?”
+
+
+A cloudy day: do you know what that is in a town of iron-works? The sky
+sank down before dawn, muddy, flat, immovable. The air is thick, clammy
+with the breath of crowded human beings. It stifles me. I open the
+window, and, looking out, can scarcely see through the rain the grocer's
+shop opposite, where a crowd of drunken Irishmen are puffing Lynchburg
+tobacco in their pipes. I can detect the scent through all the foul
+smells ranging loose in the air.
+
+The idiosyncrasy of this town is smoke. It rolls sullenly in slow folds
+from the great chimneys of the iron-foundries, and settles down in
+black, slimy pools on the muddy streets. Smoke on the wharves, smoke on
+the dingy boats, on the yellow river,--clinging in a coating of greasy
+soot to the house-front, the two faded poplars, the faces of the
+passers-by. The long train of mules, dragging masses of pig-iron through
+the narrow street, have a foul vapor hanging to their reeking sides.
+Here, inside, is a little broken figure of an angel pointing upward from
+the mantel-shelf; but even its wings are covered with smoke, clotted
+and black. Smoke everywhere! A dirty canary chirps desolately in a
+cage beside me. Its dream of green fields and sunshine is a very old
+dream,--almost worn out, I think.
+
+From the back-window I can see a narrow brick-yard sloping down to
+the river-side, strewed with rain-butts and tubs. The river, dull and
+tawny-colored, (la belle riviere!) drags itself sluggishly along, tired
+of the heavy weight of boats and coal-barges. What wonder? When I was a
+child, I used to fancy a look of weary, dumb appeal upon the face of the
+negro-like river slavishly bearing its burden day after day. Something
+of the same idle notion comes to me to-day, when from the street-window
+I look on the slow stream of human life creeping past, night and
+morning, to the great mills. Masses of men, with dull, besotted faces
+bent to the ground, sharpened here and there by pain or cunning; skin
+and muscle and flesh begrimed with smoke and ashes; stooping all night
+over boiling caldrons of metal, laired by day in dens of drunkenness and
+infamy; breathing from infancy to death an air saturated with fog and
+grease and soot, vileness for soul and body. What do you make of a case
+like that, amateur psychologist? You call it an altogether serious thing
+to be alive: to these men it is a drunken jest, a joke,--horrible to
+angels perhaps, to them commonplace enough. My fancy about the river was
+an idle one: it is no type of such a life. What if it be stagnant and
+slimy here? It knows that beyond there waits for it odorous sunlight,
+quaint old gardens, dusky with soft, green foliage of apple-trees, and
+flushing crimson with roses,--air, and fields, and mountains. The future
+of the Welsh puddler passing just now is not so pleasant. To be stowed
+away, after his grimy work is done, in a hole in the muddy graveyard,
+and after that, not air, nor green fields, nor curious roses.
+
+Can you see how foggy the day is? As I stand here, idly tapping the
+windowpane, and looking out through the rain at the dirty back-yard and
+the coalboats below, fragments of an old story float up before me,--a
+story of this house into which I happened to come to-day. You may think
+it a tiresome story enough, as foggy as the day, sharpened by no sudden
+flashes of pain or pleasure.--I know: only the outline of a dull life,
+that long since, with thousands of dull lives like its own, was vainly
+lived and lost: thousands of them, massed, vile, slimy lives, like those
+of the torpid lizards in yonder stagnant water-butt.--Lost? There is a
+curious point for you to settle, my friend, who study psychology in a
+lazy, dilettante way. Stop a moment. I am going to be honest. This is
+what I want you to do. I want you to hide your disgust, take no heed
+to your clean clothes, and come right down with me,--here, into the
+thickest of the fog and mud and foul effluvia. I want you to hear this
+story. There is a secret down here, in this nightmare fog, that has lain
+dumb for centuries: I want to make it a real thing to you. You, Egoist,
+or Pantheist, or Arminian, busy in making straight paths for your feet
+on the hills, do not see it clearly,--this terrible question which men
+here have gone mad and died trying to answer. I dare not put this secret
+into words. I told you it was dumb. These men, going by with drunken
+faces and brains full of unawakened power, do not ask it of Society or
+of God. Their lives ask it; their deaths ask it. There is no reply. I
+will tell you plainly that I have a great hope; and I bring it to you
+to be tested. It is this: that this terrible dumb question is its own
+reply; that it is not the sentence of death we think it, but, from the
+very extremity of its darkness, the most solemn prophecy which the world
+has known of the Hope to come. I dare make my meaning no clearer, but
+will only tell my story. It will, perhaps, seem to you as foul and dark
+as this thick vapor about us, and as pregnant with death; but if your
+eyes are free as mine are to look deeper, no perfume-tinted dawn will be
+so fair with promise of the day that shall surely come.
+
+My story is very simple,--Only what I remember of the life of one
+of these men,--a furnace-tender in one of Kirby & John's
+rolling-mills,--Hugh Wolfe. You know the mills? They took the great
+order for the lower Virginia railroads there last winter; run usually
+with about a thousand men. I cannot tell why I choose the half-forgotten
+story of this Wolfe more than that of myriads of these furnace-hands.
+Perhaps because there is a secret, underlying sympathy between that
+story and this day with its impure fog and thwarted sunshine,--or
+perhaps simply for the reason that this house is the one where the
+Wolfes lived. There were the father and son,--both hands, as I said,
+in one of Kirby & John's mills for making railroad-iron,--and Deborah,
+their cousin, a picker in some of the cotton-mills. The house was rented
+then to half a dozen families. The Wolfes had two of the cellar-rooms.
+The old man, like many of the puddlers and feeders of the mills, was
+Welsh,--had spent half of his life in the Cornish tin-mines. You may
+pick the Welsh emigrants, Cornish miners, out of the throng passing the
+windows, any day. They are a trifle more filthy; their muscles are not
+so brawny; they stoop more. When they are drunk, they neither yell, nor
+shout, nor stagger, but skulk along like beaten hounds. A pure,
+unmixed blood, I fancy: shows itself in the slight angular bodies and
+sharply-cut facial lines. It is nearly thirty years since the Wolfes
+lived here. Their lives were like those of their class: incessant
+labor, sleeping in kennel-like rooms, eating rank pork and molasses,
+drinking--God and the distillers only know what; with an occasional
+night in jail, to atone for some drunken excess. Is that all of their
+lives?--of the portion given to them and these their duplicates swarming
+the streets to-day?--nothing beneath?--all? So many a political reformer
+will tell you,--and many a private reformer, too, who has gone among
+them with a heart tender with Christ's charity, and come out outraged,
+hardened.
+
+One rainy night, about eleven o'clock, a crowd of half-clothed women
+stopped outside of the cellar-door. They were going home from the
+cotton-mill.
+
+“Good-night, Deb,” said one, a mulatto, steadying herself against the
+gas-post. She needed the post to steady her. So did more than one of
+them.
+
+“Dah's a ball to Miss Potts' to-night. Ye'd best come.”
+
+“Inteet, Deb, if hur'll come, hur'll hef fun,” said a shrill Welsh voice
+in the crowd.
+
+Two or three dirty hands were thrust out to catch the gown of the woman,
+who was groping for the latch of the door.
+
+“No.”
+
+“No? Where's Kit Small, then?”
+
+“Begorra! on the spools. Alleys behint, though we helped her, we dud.
+An wid ye! Let Deb alone! It's ondacent frettin' a quite body. Be the
+powers, an we'll have a night of it! there'll be lashin's o' drink,--the
+Vargent be blessed and praised for't!”
+
+They went on, the mulatto inclining for a moment to show fight, and drag
+the woman Wolfe off with them; but, being pacified, she staggered away.
+
+Deborah groped her way into the cellar, and, after considerable
+stumbling, kindled a match, and lighted a tallow dip, that sent a yellow
+glimmer over the room. It was low, damp,--the earthen floor covered with
+a green, slimy moss,--a fetid air smothering the breath. Old Wolfe lay
+asleep on a heap of straw, wrapped in a torn horse-blanket. He was a
+pale, meek little man, with a white face and red rabbit-eyes. The woman
+Deborah was like him; only her face was even more ghastly, her lips
+bluer, her eyes more watery. She wore a faded cotton gown and a
+slouching bonnet. When she walked, one could see that she was deformed,
+almost a hunchback. She trod softly, so as not to waken him, and went
+through into the room beyond. There she found by the half-extinguished
+fire an iron saucepan filled with cold boiled potatoes, which she put
+upon a broken chair with a pint-cup of ale. Placing the old candlestick
+beside this dainty repast, she untied her bonnet, which hung limp and
+wet over her face, and prepared to eat her supper. It was the first
+food that had touched her lips since morning. There was enough of it,
+however: there is not always. She was hungry,--one could see that easily
+enough,--and not drunk, as most of her companions would have been
+found at this hour. She did not drink, this woman,--her face told that,
+too,--nothing stronger than ale. Perhaps the weak, flaccid wretch had
+some stimulant in her pale life to keep her up,--some love or hope, it
+might be, or urgent need. When that stimulant was gone, she would take
+to whiskey. Man cannot live by work alone. While she was skinning the
+potatoes, and munching them, a noise behind her made her stop.
+
+“Janey!” she called, lifting the candle and peering into the darkness.
+“Janey, are you there?”
+
+A heap of ragged coats was heaved up, and the face of a young girl
+emerged, staring sleepily at the woman.
+
+“Deborah,” she said, at last, “I'm here the night.”
+
+“Yes, child. Hur's welcome,” she said, quietly eating on.
+
+The girl's face was haggard and sickly; her eyes were heavy with sleep
+and hunger: real Milesian eyes they were, dark, delicate blue, glooming
+out from black shadows with a pitiful fright.
+
+“I was alone,” she said, timidly.
+
+“Where's the father?” asked Deborah, holding out a potato, which the
+girl greedily seized.
+
+“He's beyant,--wid Haley,--in the stone house.” (Did you ever hear the
+word tail from an Irish mouth?) “I came here. Hugh told me never to stay
+me-lone.”
+
+“Hugh?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+A vexed frown crossed her face. The girl saw it, and added quickly,--
+
+“I have not seen Hugh the day, Deb. The old man says his watch lasts
+till the mornin'.”
+
+The woman sprang up, and hastily began to arrange some bread and flitch
+in a tin pail, and to pour her own measure of ale into a bottle. Tying
+on her bonnet, she blew out the candle.
+
+“Lay ye down, Janey dear,” she said, gently, covering her with the old
+rags. “Hur can eat the potatoes, if hur's hungry.
+
+“Where are ye goin', Deb? The rain's sharp.”
+
+“To the mill, with Hugh's supper.”
+
+“Let him bide till th' morn. Sit ye down.”
+
+“No, no,”--sharply pushing her off. “The boy'll starve.”
+
+She hurried from the cellar, while the child wearily coiled herself up
+for sleep. The rain was falling heavily, as the woman, pail in hand,
+emerged from the mouth of the alley, and turned down the narrow street,
+that stretched out, long and black, miles before her. Here and there a
+flicker of gas lighted an uncertain space of muddy footwalk and gutter;
+the long rows of houses, except an occasional lager-bier shop, were
+closed; now and then she met a band of millhands skulking to or from
+their work.
+
+Not many even of the inhabitants of a manufacturing town know the vast
+machinery of system by which the bodies of workmen are governed, that
+goes on unceasingly from year to year. The hands of each mill are
+divided into watches that relieve each other as regularly as the
+sentinels of an army. By night and day the work goes on, the unsleeping
+engines groan and shriek, the fiery pools of metal boil and surge. Only
+for a day in the week, in half-courtesy to public censure, the fires are
+partially veiled; but as soon as the clock strikes midnight, the great
+furnaces break forth with renewed fury, the clamor begins with fresh,
+breathless vigor, the engines sob and shriek like “gods in pain.”
+
+As Deborah hurried down through the heavy rain, the noise of these
+thousand engines sounded through the sleep and shadow of the city like
+far-off thunder. The mill to which she was going lay on the river, a
+mile below the city-limits. It was far, and she was weak, aching from
+standing twelve hours at the spools. Yet it was her almost nightly walk
+to take this man his supper, though at every square she sat down to
+rest, and she knew she should receive small word of thanks.
+
+Perhaps, if she had possessed an artist's eye, the picturesque oddity
+of the scene might have made her step stagger less, and the path seem
+shorter; but to her the mills were only “summat deilish to look at by
+night.”
+
+The road leading to the mills had been quarried from the solid rock,
+which rose abrupt and bare on one side of the cinder-covered road, while
+the river, sluggish and black, crept past on the other. The mills for
+rolling iron are simply immense tent-like roofs, covering acres of
+ground, open on every side. Beneath these roofs Deborah looked in on a
+city of fires, that burned hot and fiercely in the night. Fire in every
+horrible form: pits of flame waving in the wind; liquid metal-flames
+writhing in tortuous streams through the sand; wide caldrons filled
+with boiling fire, over which bent ghastly wretches stirring the
+strange brewing; and through all, crowds of half-clad men, looking
+like revengeful ghosts in the red light, hurried, throwing masses of
+glittering fire. It was like a street in Hell. Even Deborah muttered, as
+she crept through, “looks like t' Devil's place!” It did,--in more ways
+than one.
+
+She found the man she was looking for, at last, heaping coal on a
+furnace. He had not time to eat his supper; so she went behind the
+furnace, and waited. Only a few men were with him, and they noticed her
+only by a “Hyur comes t'hunchback, Wolfe.”
+
+Deborah was stupid with sleep; her back pained her sharply; and her
+teeth chattered with cold, with the rain that soaked her clothes and
+dripped from her at every step. She stood, however, patiently holding
+the pail, and waiting.
+
+“Hout, woman! ye look like a drowned cat. Come near to the fire,”--said
+one of the men, approaching to scrape away the ashes.
+
+She shook her head. Wolfe had forgotten her. He turned, hearing the man,
+and came closer.
+
+“I did no' think; gi' me my supper, woman.”
+
+She watched him eat with a painful eagerness. With a woman's quick
+instinct, she saw that he was not hungry,--was eating to please her. Her
+pale, watery eyes began to gather a strange light.
+
+“Is't good, Hugh? T' ale was a bit sour, I feared.”
+
+“No, good enough.” He hesitated a moment. “Ye're tired, poor lass! Bide
+here till I go. Lay down there on that heap of ash, and go to sleep.”
+
+He threw her an old coat for a pillow, and turned to his work. The
+heap was the refuse of the burnt iron, and was not a hard bed; the
+half-smothered warmth, too, penetrated her limbs, dulling their pain and
+cold shiver.
+
+Miserable enough she looked, lying there on the ashes like a limp,
+dirty rag,--yet not an unfitting figure to crown the scene of hopeless
+discomfort and veiled crime: more fitting, if one looked deeper into the
+heart of things, at her thwarted woman's form, her colorless life, her
+waking stupor that smothered pain and hunger,--even more fit to be a
+type of her class. Deeper yet if one could look, was there nothing worth
+reading in this wet, faded thing, halfcovered with ashes? no story of a
+soul filled with groping passionate love, heroic unselfishness, fierce
+jealousy? of years of weary trying to please the one human being whom
+she loved, to gain one look of real heart-kindness from him? If
+anything like this were hidden beneath the pale, bleared eyes, and dull,
+washed-out-looking face, no one had ever taken the trouble to read its
+faint signs: not the half-clothed furnace-tender, Wolfe, certainly. Yet
+he was kind to her: it was his nature to be kind, even to the very rats
+that swarmed in the cellar: kind to her in just the same way. She knew
+that. And it might be that very knowledge had given to her face its
+apathy and vacancy more than her low, torpid life. One sees that
+dead, vacant look steal sometimes over the rarest, finest of women's
+faces,--in the very midst, it may be, of their warmest summer's day; and
+then one can guess at the secret of intolerable solitude that lies hid
+beneath the delicate laces and brilliant smile. There was no warmth, no
+brilliancy, no summer for this woman; so the stupor and vacancy had time
+to gnaw into her face perpetually. She was young, too, though no one
+guessed it; so the gnawing was the fiercer.
+
+She lay quiet in the dark corner, listening, through the monotonous din
+and uncertain glare of the works, to the dull plash of the rain in the
+far distance, shrinking back whenever the man Wolfe happened to look
+towards her. She knew, in spite of all his kindness, that there was that
+in her face and form which made him loathe the sight of her. She felt by
+instinct, although she could not comprehend it, the finer nature of
+the man, which made him among his fellow-workmen something unique, set
+apart. She knew, that, down under all the vileness and coarseness of his
+life, there was a groping passion for whatever was beautiful and pure,
+that his soul sickened with disgust at her deformity, even when his
+words were kindest. Through this dull consciousness, which never left
+her, came, like a sting, the recollection of the dark blue eyes and
+lithe figure of the little Irish girl she had left in the cellar. The
+recollection struck through even her stupid intellect with a vivid glow
+of beauty and of grace. Little Janey, timid, helpless, clinging to Hugh
+as her only friend: that was the sharp thought, the bitter thought, that
+drove into the glazed eyes a fierce light of pain. You laugh at it? Are
+pain and jealousy less savage realities down here in this place I am
+taking you to than in your own house or your own heart,--your heart,
+which they clutch at sometimes? The note is the same, I fancy, be the
+octave high or low.
+
+If you could go into this mill where Deborah lay, and drag out from the
+hearts of these men the terrible tragedy of their lives, taking it as a
+symptom of the disease of their class, no ghost Horror would terrify
+you more. A reality of soul-starvation, of living death, that meets you
+every day under the besotted faces on the street,--I can paint nothing
+of this, only give you the outside outlines of a night, a crisis in the
+life of one man: whatever muddy depth of soul-history lies beneath you
+can read according to the eyes God has given you.
+
+Wolfe, while Deborah watched him as a spaniel its master, bent over the
+furnace with his iron pole, unconscious of her scrutiny, only stopping
+to receive orders. Physically, Nature had promised the man but little.
+He had already lost the strength and instinct vigor of a man, his
+muscles were thin, his nerves weak, his face ( a meek, woman's face)
+haggard, yellow with consumption. In the mill he was known as one of
+the girl-men: “Molly Wolfe” was his sobriquet. He was never seen in
+the cockpit, did not own a terrier, drank but seldom; when he did,
+desperately. He fought sometimes, but was always thrashed, pommelled to
+a jelly. The man was game enough, when his blood was up: but he was no
+favorite in the mill; he had the taint of school-learning on him,--not
+to a dangerous extent, only a quarter or so in the free-school in fact,
+but enough to ruin him as a good hand in a fight.
+
+For other reasons, too, he was not popular. Not one of themselves, they
+felt that, though outwardly as filthy and ash-covered; silent, with
+foreign thoughts and longings breaking out through his quietness in
+innumerable curious ways: this one, for instance. In the neighboring
+furnace-buildings lay great heaps of the refuse from the ore after the
+pig-metal is run. Korl we call it here: a light, porous substance, of
+a delicate, waxen, flesh-colored tinge. Out of the blocks of this korl,
+Wolfe, in his off-hours from the furnace, had a habit of chipping and
+moulding figures,--hideous, fantastic enough, but sometimes strangely
+beautiful: even the mill-men saw that, while they jeered at him. It was
+a curious fancy in the man, almost a passion. The few hours for rest he
+spent hewing and hacking with his blunt knife, never speaking, until his
+watch came again,--working at one figure for months, and, when it was
+finished, breaking it to pieces perhaps, in a fit of disappointment. A
+morbid, gloomy man, untaught, unled, left to feed his soul in grossness
+and crime, and hard, grinding labor.
+
+I want you to come down and look at this Wolfe, standing there among the
+lowest of his kind, and see him just as he is, that you may judge him
+justly when you hear the story of this night. I want you to look back,
+as he does every day, at his birth in vice, his starved infancy; to
+remember the heavy years he has groped through as boy and man,--the
+slow, heavy years of constant, hot work. So long ago he began, that he
+thinks sometimes he has worked there for ages. There is no hope that it
+will ever end. Think that God put into this man's soul a fierce thirst
+for beauty,--to know it, to create it; to be--something, he knows not
+what,--other than he is. There are moments when a passing cloud, the sun
+glinting on the purple thistles, a kindly smile, a child's face, will
+rouse him to a passion of pain,--when his nature starts up with a mad
+cry of rage against God, man, whoever it is that has forced this vile,
+slimy life upon him. With all this groping, this mad desire, a great
+blind intellect stumbling through wrong, a loving poet's heart, the man
+was by habit only a coarse, vulgar laborer, familiar with sights and
+words you would blush to name. Be just: when I tell you about this
+night, see him as he is. Be just,--not like man's law, which seizes on
+one isolated fact, but like God's judging angel, whose clear, sad
+eye saw all the countless cankering days of this man's life, all the
+countless nights, when, sick with starving, his soul fainted in him,
+before it judged him for this night, the saddest of all.
+
+I called this night the crisis of his life. If it was, it stole on him
+unawares. These great turning-days of life cast no shadow before, slip
+by unconsciously. Only a trifle, a little turn of the rudder, and the
+ship goes to heaven or hell.
+
+Wolfe, while Deborah watched him, dug into the furnace of melting iron
+with his pole, dully thinking only how many rails the lump would yield.
+It was late,--nearly Sunday morning; another hour, and the heavy work
+would be done, only the furnaces to replenish and cover for the next
+day. The workmen were growing more noisy, shouting, as they had to do,
+to be heard over the deep clamor of the mills. Suddenly they grew less
+boisterous,--at the far end, entirely silent. Something unusual had
+happened. After a moment, the silence came nearer; the men stopped their
+jeers and drunken choruses. Deborah, stupidly lifting up her head,
+saw the cause of the quiet. A group of five or six men were slowly
+approaching, stopping to examine each furnace as they came. Visitors
+often came to see the mills after night: except by growing less noisy,
+the men took no notice of them. The furnace where Wolfe worked was near
+the bounds of the works; they halted there hot and tired: a walk over
+one of these great foundries is no trifling task. The woman, drawing out
+of sight, turned over to sleep. Wolfe, seeing them stop, suddenly roused
+from his indifferent stupor, and watched them keenly. He knew some
+of them: the overseer, Clarke,--a son of Kirby, one of the
+mill-owners,--and a Doctor May, one of the town-physicians. The other
+two were strangers. Wolfe came closer. He seized eagerly every chance
+that brought him into contact with this mysterious class that shone down
+on him perpetually with the glamour of another order of being. What made
+the difference between them? That was the mystery of his life. He had
+a vague notion that perhaps to-night he could find it out. One of the
+strangers sat down on a pile of bricks, and beckoned young Kirby to his
+side.
+
+“This is hot, with a vengeance. A match, please?”--lighting his cigar.
+“But the walk is worth the trouble. If it were not that you must have
+heard it so often, Kirby, I would tell you that your works look like
+Dante's Inferno.”
+
+Kirby laughed.
+
+“Yes. Yonder is Farinata himself in the burning tomb,”--pointing to some
+figure in the shimmering shadows.
+
+“Judging from some of the faces of your men,” said the other, “they bid
+fair to try the reality of Dante's vision, some day.”
+
+Young Kirby looked curiously around, as if seeing the faces of his hands
+for the first time.
+
+“They're bad enough, that's true. A desperate set, I fancy. Eh, Clarke?”
+
+The overseer did not hear him. He was talking of net profits just
+then,--giving, in fact, a schedule of the annual business of the firm to
+a sharp peering little Yankee, who jotted down notes on a paper laid on
+the crown of his hat: a reporter for one of the city-papers, getting up
+a series of reviews of the leading manufactories. The other gentlemen
+had accompanied them merely for amusement. They were silent until the
+notes were finished, drying their feet at the furnaces, and sheltering
+their faces from the intolerable heat. At last the overseer concluded
+with--
+
+“I believe that is a pretty fair estimate, Captain.”
+
+“Here, some of you men!” said Kirby, “bring up those boards. We may as
+well sit down, gentlemen, until the rain is over. It cannot last much
+longer at this rate.”
+
+“Pig-metal,”--mumbled the reporter,--“um! coal facilities,--um! hands
+employed, twelve hundred,--bitumen,--um!--all right, I believe, Mr.
+Clarke;--sinking-fund,--what did you say was your sinking-fund?”
+
+“Twelve hundred hands?” said the stranger, the young man who had first
+spoken. “Do you control their votes, Kirby?”
+
+“Control? No.” The young man smiled complacently. “But my father brought
+seven hundred votes to the polls for his candidate last November.
+No force-work, you understand,--only a speech or two, a hint to form
+themselves into a society, and a bit of red and blue bunting to make
+them a flag. The Invincible Roughs,--I believe that is their name. I
+forget the motto: 'Our country's hope,' I think.”
+
+There was a laugh. The young man talking to Kirby sat with an amused
+light in his cool gray eye, surveying critically the half-clothed
+figures of the puddlers, and the slow swing of their brawny muscles. He
+was a stranger in the city,--spending a couple of months in the
+borders of a Slave State, to study the institutions of the South,--a
+brother-in-law of Kirby's,--Mitchell. He was an amateur gymnast,--hence
+his anatomical eye; a patron, in a blase' way, of the prize-ring; a man
+who sucked the essence out of a science or philosophy in an indifferent,
+gentlemanly way; who took Kant, Novalis, Humboldt, for what they were
+worth in his own scales; accepting all, despising nothing, in heaven,
+earth, or hell, but one-idead men; with a temper yielding and brilliant
+as summer water, until his Self was touched, when it was ice, though
+brilliant still. Such men are not rare in the States.
+
+As he knocked the ashes from his cigar, Wolfe caught with a quick
+pleasure the contour of the white hand, the blood-glow of a red ring he
+wore. His voice, too, and that of Kirby's, touched him like music,--low,
+even, with chording cadences. About this man Mitchell hung the
+impalpable atmosphere belonging to the thoroughbred gentleman, Wolfe,
+scraping away the ashes beside him, was conscious of it, did obeisance
+to it with his artist sense, unconscious that he did so.
+
+The rain did not cease. Clarke and the reporter left the mills; the
+others, comfortably seated near the furnace, lingered, smoking
+and talking in a desultory way. Greek would not have been more
+unintelligible to the furnace-tenders, whose presence they soon forgot
+entirely. Kirby drew out a newspaper from his pocket and read aloud some
+article, which they discussed eagerly. At every sentence, Wolfe listened
+more and more like a dumb, hopeless animal, with a duller, more stolid
+look creeping over his face, glancing now and then at Mitchell, marking
+acutely every smallest sign of refinement, then back to himself, seeing
+as in a mirror his filthy body, his more stained soul.
+
+Never! He had no words for such a thought, but he knew now, in all the
+sharpness of the bitter certainty, that between them there was a great
+gulf never to be passed. Never!
+
+The bell of the mills rang for midnight. Sunday morning had dawned.
+Whatever hidden message lay in the tolling bells floated past these men
+unknown. Yet it was there. Veiled in the solemn music ushering the risen
+Saviour was a key-note to solve the darkest secrets of a world gone
+wrong,--even this social riddle which the brain of the grimy puddler
+grappled with madly to-night.
+
+The men began to withdraw the metal from the caldrons. The mills were
+deserted on Sundays, except by the hands who fed the fires, and those
+who had no lodgings and slept usually on the ash-heaps. The three
+strangers sat still during the next hour, watching the men cover the
+furnaces, laughing now and then at some jest of Kirby's.
+
+“Do you know,” said Mitchell, “I like this view of the works better than
+when the glare was fiercest? These heavy shadows and the amphitheatre
+of smothered fires are ghostly, unreal. One could fancy these red
+smouldering lights to be the half-shut eyes of wild beasts, and the
+spectral figures their victims in the den.”
+
+Kirby laughed. “You are fanciful. Come, let us get out of the den. The
+spectral figures, as you call them, are a little too real for me to
+fancy a close proximity in the darkness,--unarmed, too.”
+
+The others rose, buttoning their overcoats, and lighting cigars.
+
+“Raining, still,” said Doctor May, “and hard. Where did we leave the
+coach, Mitchell?”
+
+“At the other side of the works.--Kirby, what's that?”
+
+Mitchell started back, half-frightened, as, suddenly turning a corner,
+the white figure of a woman faced him in the darkness,--a woman, white,
+of giant proportions, crouching on the ground, her arms flung out in
+some wild gesture of warning.
+
+“Stop! Make that fire burn there!” cried Kirby, stopping short.
+
+The flame burst out, flashing the gaunt figure into bold relief.
+
+Mitchell drew a long breath.
+
+“I thought it was alive,” he said, going up curiously.
+
+The others followed.
+
+“Not marble, eh?” asked Kirby, touching it.
+
+One of the lower overseers stopped.
+
+“Korl, Sir.”
+
+“Who did it?”
+
+“Can't say. Some of the hands; chipped it out in off-hours.”
+
+“Chipped to some purpose, I should say. What a flesh-tint the stuff has!
+Do you see, Mitchell?”
+
+“I see.”
+
+He had stepped aside where the light fell boldest on the figure, looking
+at it in silence. There was not one line of beauty or grace in it: a
+nude woman's form, muscular, grown coarse with labor, the powerful limbs
+instinct with some one poignant longing. One idea: there it was in the
+tense, rigid muscles, the clutching hands, the wild, eager face, like
+that of a starving wolf's. Kirby and Doctor May walked around it,
+critical, curious. Mitchell stood aloof, silent. The figure touched him
+strangely.
+
+“Not badly done,” said Doctor May, “Where did the fellow learn that
+sweep of the muscles in the arm and hand? Look at them! They are
+groping, do you see?--clutching: the peculiar action of a man dying of
+thirst.”
+
+“They have ample facilities for studying anatomy,” sneered Kirby,
+glancing at the half-naked figures.
+
+“Look,” continued the Doctor, “at this bony wrist, and the strained
+sinews of the instep! A working-woman,--the very type of her class.”
+
+“God forbid!” muttered Mitchell.
+
+“Why?” demanded May, “What does the fellow intend by the figure? I
+cannot catch the meaning.”
+
+“Ask him,” said the other, dryly, “There he stands,”--pointing to Wolfe,
+who stood with a group of men, leaning on his ash-rake.
+
+The Doctor beckoned him with the affable smile which kind-hearted men
+put on, when talking to these people.
+
+“Mr. Mitchell has picked you out as the man who did this,--I'm sure I
+don't know why. But what did you mean by it?”
+
+“She be hungry.”
+
+Wolfe's eyes answered Mitchell, not the Doctor.
+
+“Oh-h! But what a mistake you have made, my fine fellow! You have given
+no sign of starvation to the body. It is strong,--terribly strong. It
+has the mad, half-despairing gesture of drowning.”
+
+Wolfe stammered, glanced appealingly at Mitchell, who saw the soul of
+the thing, he knew. But the cool, probing eyes were turned on himself
+now,--mocking, cruel, relentless.
+
+“Not hungry for meat,” the furnace-tender said at last.
+
+“What then? Whiskey?” jeered Kirby, with a coarse laugh.
+
+Wolfe was silent a moment, thinking.
+
+“I dunno,” he said, with a bewildered look. “It mebbe. Summat to make
+her live, I think,--like you. Whiskey ull do it, in a way.”
+
+The young man laughed again. Mitchell flashed a look of disgust
+somewhere,--not at Wolfe.
+
+“May,” he broke out impatiently, “are you blind? Look at that woman's
+face! It asks questions of God, and says, 'I have a right to know,' Good
+God, how hungry it is!”
+
+They looked a moment; then May turned to the mill-owner:--
+
+“Have you many such hands as this? What are you going to do with them?
+Keep them at puddling iron?”
+
+Kirby shrugged his shoulders. Mitchell's look had irritated him.
+
+“Ce n'est pas mon affaire. I have no fancy for nursing infant geniuses.
+I suppose there are some stray gleams of mind and soul among these
+wretches. The Lord will take care of his own; or else they can work out
+their own salvation. I have heard you call our American system a ladder
+which any man can scale. Do you doubt it? Or perhaps you want to banish
+all social ladders, and put us all on a flat table-land,--eh, May?”
+
+The Doctor looked vexed, puzzled. Some terrible problem lay hid in this
+woman's face, and troubled these men. Kirby waited for an answer, and,
+receiving none, went on, warming with his subject.
+
+“I tell you, there's something wrong that no talk of 'Liberte' or
+'Egalite' will do away. If I had the making of men, these men who do
+the lowest part of the world's work should be machines,--nothing
+more,--hands. It would be kindness. God help them! What are taste,
+reason, to creatures who must live such lives as that?” He pointed to
+Deborah, sleeping on the ash-heap. “So many nerves to sting them to
+pain. What if God had put your brain, with all its agony of touch, into
+your fingers, and bid you work and strike with that?”
+
+“You think you could govern the world better?” laughed the Doctor.
+
+“I do not think at all.”
+
+“That is true philosophy. Drift with the stream, because you cannot dive
+deep enough to find bottom, eh?”
+
+“Exactly,” rejoined Kirby. “I do not think. I wash my hands of all
+social problems,--slavery, caste, white or black. My duty to my
+operatives has a narrow limit,--the pay-hour on Saturday night. Outside
+of that, if they cut korl, or cut each other's throats, (the more
+popular amusement of the two,) I am not responsible.”
+
+The Doctor sighed,--a good honest sigh, from the depths of his stomach.
+
+“God help us! Who is responsible?”
+
+“Not I, I tell you,” said Kirby, testily. “What has the man who pays
+them money to do with their souls' concerns, more than the grocer or
+butcher who takes it?”
+
+“And yet,” said Mitchell's cynical voice, “look at her! How hungry she
+is!”
+
+Kirby tapped his boot with his cane. No one spoke. Only the dumb face of
+the rough image looking into their faces with the awful question, “What
+shall we do to be saved?” Only Wolfe's face, with its heavy weight
+of brain, its weak, uncertain mouth, its desperate eyes, out of which
+looked the soul of his class,--only Wolfe's face turned towards Kirby's.
+Mitchell laughed,--a cool, musical laugh.
+
+“Money has spoken!” he said, seating himself lightly on a stone with the
+air of an amused spectator at a play. “Are you answered?”--turning to
+Wolfe his clear, magnetic face.
+
+Bright and deep and cold as Arctic air, the soul of the man lay tranquil
+beneath. He looked at the furnace-tender as he had looked at a rare
+mosaic in the morning; only the man was the more amusing study of the
+two.
+
+“Are you answered? Why, May, look at him! 'De profundis clamavi.' Or, to
+quote in English, 'Hungry and thirsty, his soul faints in him.' And so
+Money sends back its answer into the depths through you, Kirby! Very
+clear the answer, too!--I think I remember reading the same words
+somewhere: washing your hands in Eau de Cologne, and saying, 'I am
+innocent of the blood of this man. See ye to it!'”
+
+Kirby flushed angrily.
+
+“You quote Scripture freely.”
+
+“Do I not quote correctly? I think I remember another line, which may
+amend my meaning? 'Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these,
+ye did it unto me.' Deist? Bless you, man, I was raised on the milk of
+the Word. Now, Doctor, the pocket of the world having uttered its
+voice, what has the heart to say? You are a philanthropist, in a small
+Way,--n'est ce pas? Here, boy, this gentleman can show you how to cut
+korl better,--or your destiny. Go on, May!”
+
+“I think a mocking devil possesses you to-night,” rejoined the Doctor,
+seriously.
+
+He went to Wolfe and put his hand kindly on his arm. Something of a
+vague idea possessed the Doctor's brain that much good was to be done
+here by a friendly word or two: a latent genius to be warmed into life
+by a waited-for sunbeam. Here it was: he had brought it. So he went on
+complacently:
+
+“Do you know, boy, you have it in you to be a great sculptor, a great
+man? do you understand?” (talking down to the capacity of his hearer:
+it is a way people have with children, and men like Wolfe,)--“to live a
+better, stronger life than I, or Mr. Kirby here? A man may make himself
+anything he chooses. God has given you stronger powers than many
+men,--me, for instance.”
+
+May stopped, heated, glowing with his own magnanimity. And it was
+magnanimous. The puddler had drunk in every word, looking through the
+Doctor's flurry, and generous heat, and self-approval, into his will,
+with those slow, absorbing eyes of his.
+
+“Make yourself what you will. It is your right.
+
+“I know,” quietly. “Will you help me?”
+
+Mitchell laughed again. The Doctor turned now, in a passion,--
+
+“You know, Mitchell, I have not the means. You know, if I had, it is in
+my heart to take this boy and educate him for”--
+
+“The glory of God, and the glory of John May.”
+
+May did not speak for a moment; then, controlled, he said,--
+
+“Why should one be raised, when myriads are left?--I have not the money,
+boy,” to Wolfe, shortly.
+
+“Money?” He said it over slowly, as one repeats the guessed answer to a
+riddle, doubtfully. “That is it? Money?”
+
+“Yes, money,--that is it,” said Mitchell, rising, and drawing his
+furred coat about him. “You've found the cure for all the world's
+diseases.--Come, May, find your good-humor, and come home. This
+damp wind chills my very bones. Come and preach your Saint-Simonian
+doctrines' to-morrow to Kirby's hands. Let them have a clear idea of the
+rights of the soul, and I'll venture next week they'll strike for higher
+wages. That will be the end of it.”
+
+“Will you send the coach-driver to this side of the mills?” asked Kirby,
+turning to Wolfe.
+
+He spoke kindly: it was his habit to do so. Deborah, seeing the puddler
+go, crept after him. The three men waited outside. Doctor May walked up
+and down, chafed. Suddenly he stopped.
+
+“Go back, Mitchell! You say the pocket and the heart of the world
+speak without meaning to these people. What has its head to say? Taste,
+culture, refinement? Go!”
+
+Mitchell was leaning against a brick wall. He turned his head
+indolently, and looked into the mills. There hung about the place a
+thick, unclean odor. The slightest motion of his hand marked that he
+perceived it, and his insufferable disgust. That was all. May said
+nothing, only quickened his angry tramp.
+
+“Besides,” added Mitchell, giving a corollary to his answer, “it would
+be of no use. I am not one of them.”
+
+“You do not mean”--said May, facing him.
+
+“Yes, I mean just that. Reform is born of need, not pity. No vital
+movement of the people's has worked down, for good or evil; fermented,
+instead, carried up the heaving, cloggy mass. Think back through
+history, and you will know it. What will this lowest deep--thieves,
+Magdalens, negroes--do with the light filtered through ponderous Church
+creeds, Baconian theories, Goethe schemes? Some day, out of their bitter
+need will be thrown up their own light-bringer,--their Jean Paul, their
+Cromwell, their Messiah.”
+
+“Bah!” was the Doctor's inward criticism. However, in practice, he
+adopted the theory; for, when, night and morning, afterwards, he prayed
+that power might be given these degraded souls to rise, he glowed at
+heart, recognizing an accomplished duty.
+
+Wolfe and the woman had stood in the shadow of the works as the coach
+drove off. The Doctor had held out his hand in a frank, generous way,
+telling him to “take care of himself, and to remember it was his right
+to rise.” Mitchell had simply touched his hat, as to an equal, with a
+quiet look of thorough recognition. Kirby had thrown Deborah some money,
+which she found, and clutched eagerly enough. They were gone now, all
+of them. The man sat down on the cinder-road, looking up into the murky
+sky.
+
+“'T be late, Hugh. Wunnot hur come?”
+
+He shook his head doggedly, and the woman crouched out of his sight
+against the wall. Do you remember rare moments when a sudden
+light flashed over yourself, your world, God? when you stood on a
+mountain-peak, seeing your life as it might have been, as it is? one
+quick instant, when custom lost its force and every-day usage? when your
+friend, wife, brother, stood in a new light? your soul was bared, and
+the grave,--a foretaste of the nakedness of the Judgment-Day? So it came
+before him, his life, that night. The slow tides of pain he had borne
+gathered themselves up and surged against his soul. His squalid daily
+life, the brutal coarseness eating into his brain, as the ashes into
+his skin: before, these things had been a dull aching into his
+consciousness; to-night, they were reality. He griped the filthy red
+shirt that clung, stiff with soot, about him, and tore it savagely from
+his arm. The flesh beneath was muddy with grease and ashes,--and the
+heart beneath that! And the soul? God knows.
+
+Then flashed before his vivid poetic sense the man who had left
+him,--the pure face, the delicate, sinewy limbs, in harmony with all he
+knew of beauty or truth. In his cloudy fancy he had pictured a Something
+like this. He had found it in this Mitchell, even when he idly
+scoffed at his pain: a Man all-knowing, all-seeing, crowned by Nature,
+reigning,--the keen glance of his eye falling like a sceptre on other
+men. And yet his instinct taught him that he too--He! He looked at
+himself with sudden loathing, sick, wrung his hands With a cry, and then
+was silent. With all the phantoms of his heated, ignorant fancy, Wolfe
+had not been vague in his ambitions. They were practical, slowly built
+up before him out of his knowledge of what he could do. Through years
+he had day by day made this hope a real thing to himself,--a clear,
+projected figure of himself, as he might become.
+
+Able to speak, to know what was best, to raise these men and women
+working at his side up with him: sometimes he forgot this defined hope
+in the frantic anguish to escape, only to escape,--out of the wet, the
+pain, the ashes, somewhere, anywhere,--only for one moment of free air
+on a hill-side, to lie down and let his sick soul throb itself out in
+the sunshine. But to-night he panted for life. The savage strength of
+his nature was roused; his cry was fierce to God for justice.
+
+“Look at me!” he said to Deborah, with a low, bitter laugh, striking his
+puny chest savagely. “What am I worth, Deb? Is it my fault that I am no
+better? My fault? My fault?”
+
+He stopped, stung with a sudden remorse, seeing her hunchback shape
+writhing with sobs. For Deborah was crying thankless tears, according to
+the fashion of women.
+
+“God forgi' me, woman! Things go harder Wi' you nor me. It's a worse
+share.”
+
+He got up and helped her to rise; and they went doggedly down the muddy
+street, side by side.
+
+“It's all wrong,” he muttered, slowly,--“all wrong! I dunnot understan'.
+But it'll end some day.”
+
+“Come home, Hugh!” she said, coaxingly; for he had stopped, looking
+around bewildered.
+
+“Home,--and back to the mill!” He went on saying this over to himself,
+as if he would mutter down every pain in this dull despair.
+
+She followed him through the fog, her blue lips chattering with cold.
+They reached the cellar at last. Old Wolfe had been drinking since she
+went out, and had crept nearer the door. The girl Janey slept heavily in
+the corner. He went up to her, touching softly the worn white arm with
+his fingers. Some bitterer thought stung him, as he stood there. He
+wiped the drops from his forehead, and went into the room beyond, livid,
+trembling. A hope, trifling, perhaps, but very dear, had died just then
+out of the poor puddler's life, as he looked at the sleeping, innocent
+girl,--some plan for the future, in which she had borne a part. He gave
+it up that moment, then and forever. Only a trifle, perhaps, to us: his
+face grew a shade paler,--that was all. But, somehow, the man's soul, as
+God and the angels looked down on it, never was the same afterwards.
+
+Deborah followed him into the inner room. She carried a candle, which
+she placed on the floor, closing the door after her. She had seen the
+look on his face, as he turned away: her own grew deadly. Yet, as she
+came up to him, her eyes glowed. He was seated on an old chest, quiet,
+holding his face in his hands.
+
+“Hugh!” she said, softly.
+
+He did not speak.
+
+“Hugh, did hur hear what the man said,--him with the clear voice? Did
+hur hear? Money, money,--that it wud do all?”
+
+He pushed her away,--gently, but he was worn out; her rasping tone
+fretted him.
+
+“Hugh!”
+
+The candle flared a pale yellow light over the cobwebbed brick walls,
+and the woman standing there. He looked at her. She was young, in
+deadly earnest; her faded eyes, and wet, ragged figure caught from their
+frantic eagerness a power akin to beauty.
+
+“Hugh, it is true! Money ull do it! Oh, Hugh, boy, listen till me! He
+said it true! It is money!”
+
+“I know. Go back! I do not want you here.”
+
+“Hugh, it is t' last time. I'll never worrit hur again.”
+
+There were tears in her voice now, but she choked them back:
+
+“Hear till me only to-night! If one of t' witch people wud come, them we
+heard oft' home, and gif hur all hur wants, what then? Say, Hugh!”
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+“I mean money.”
+
+Her whisper shrilled through his brain.
+
+“If one oft' witch dwarfs wud come from t' lane moors to-night, and gif
+hur money, to go out,--OUT, I say,--out, lad, where t' sun shines, and
+t' heath grows, and t' ladies walk in silken gownds, and God stays
+all t' time,--where t'man lives that talked to us to-night, Hugh
+knows,--Hugh could walk there like a king!”
+
+He thought the woman mad, tried to check her, but she went on, fierce in
+her eager haste.
+
+“If I were t' witch dwarf, if I had t' money, wud hur thank me? Wud hur
+take me out o' this place wid hur and Janey? I wud not come into the
+gran' house hur wud build, to vex hur wid t' hunch,--only at night, when
+t' shadows were dark, stand far off to see hur.”
+
+Mad? Yes! Are many of us mad in this way?
+
+“Poor Deb! poor Deb!” he said, soothingly.
+
+“It is here,” she said, suddenly, jerking into his hand a small roll. “I
+took it! I did it! Me, me!--not hur! I shall be hanged, I shall be burnt
+in hell, if anybody knows I took it! Out of his pocket, as he leaned
+against t' bricks. Hur knows?”
+
+She thrust it into his hand, and then, her errand done, began to gather
+chips together to make a fire, choking down hysteric sobs.
+
+“Has it come to this?”
+
+That was all he said. The Welsh Wolfe blood was honest. The roll was a
+small green pocket-book containing one or two gold pieces, and a check
+for an incredible amount, as it seemed to the poor puddler. He laid it
+down, hiding his face again in his hands.
+
+“Hugh, don't be angry wud me! It's only poor Deb,--hur knows?”
+
+He took the long skinny fingers kindly in his.
+
+“Angry? God help me, no! Let me sleep. I am tired.”
+
+He threw himself heavily down on the wooden bench, stunned with pain and
+weariness. She brought some old rags to cover him.
+
+It was late on Sunday evening before he awoke. I tell God's truth, when
+I say he had then no thought of keeping this money. Deborah had hid it
+in his pocket. He found it there. She watched him eagerly, as he took it
+out.
+
+“I must gif it to him,” he said, reading her face.
+
+“Hur knows,” she said with a bitter sigh of disappointment. “But it is
+hur right to keep it.”
+
+His right! The word struck him. Doctor May had used the same. He washed
+himself, and went out to find this man Mitchell. His right! Why did this
+chance word cling to him so obstinately? Do you hear the fierce devils
+whisper in his ear, as he went slowly down the darkening street?
+
+The evening came on, slow and calm. He seated himself at the end of
+an alley leading into one of the larger streets. His brain was clear
+to-night, keen, intent, mastering. It would not start back, cowardly,
+from any hellish temptation, but meet it face to face. Therefore the
+great temptation of his life came to him veiled by no sophistry, but
+bold, defiant, owning its own vile name, trusting to one bold blow for
+victory.
+
+He did not deceive himself. Theft! That was it. At first the word
+sickened him; then he grappled with it. Sitting there on a broken
+cart-wheel, the fading day, the noisy groups, the church-bells' tolling
+passed before him like a panorama, while the sharp struggle went on
+within. This money! He took it out, and looked at it. If he gave it
+back, what then? He was going to be cool about it.
+
+People going by to church saw only a sickly mill-boy watching them
+quietly at the alley's mouth. They did not know that he was mad, or they
+would not have gone by so quietly: mad with hunger; stretching out his
+hands to the world, that had given so much to them, for leave to live
+the life God meant him to live. His soul within him was smothering to
+death; he wanted so much, thought so much, and knew--nothing. There was
+nothing of which he was certain, except the mill and things there.
+Of God and heaven he had heard so little, that they were to him what
+fairy-land is to a child: something real, but not here; very far off.
+His brain, greedy, dwarfed, full of thwarted energy and unused powers,
+questioned these men and women going by, coldly, bitterly, that night.
+Was it not his right to live as they,--a pure life, a good, true-hearted
+life, full of beauty and kind words? He only wanted to know how to
+use the strength within him. His heart warmed, as he thought of it. He
+suffered himself to think of it longer. If he took the money?
+
+Then he saw himself as he might be, strong, helpful, kindly. The night
+crept on, as this one image slowly evolved itself from the crowd of
+other thoughts and stood triumphant. He looked at it. As he might be!
+What wonder, if it blinded him to delirium,--the madness that underlies
+all revolution, all progress, and all fall?
+
+You laugh at the shallow temptation? You see the error underlying
+its argument so clearly,--that to him a true life was one of full
+development rather than self-restraint? that he was deaf to the higher
+tone in a cry of voluntary suffering for truth's sake than in the
+fullest flow of spontaneous harmony? I do not plead his cause. I only
+want to show you the mote in my brother's eye: then you can see clearly
+to take it out.
+
+The money,--there it lay on his knee, a little blotted slip of paper,
+nothing in itself; used to raise him out of the pit, something straight
+from God's hand. A thief! Well, what was it to be a thief? He met the
+question at last, face to face, wiping the clammy drops of sweat
+from his forehead. God made this money--the fresh air, too--for his
+children's use. He never made the difference between poor and rich. The
+Something who looked down on him that moment through the cool gray sky
+had a kindly face, he knew,--loved his children alike. Oh, he knew that!
+
+There were times when the soft floods of color in the crimson and purple
+flames, or the clear depth of amber in the water below the bridge, had
+somehow given him a glimpse of another world than this,--of an infinite
+depth of beauty and of quiet somewhere,--somewhere, a depth of quiet
+and rest and love. Looking up now, it became strangely real. The sun had
+sunk quite below the hills, but his last rays struck upward, touching
+the zenith. The fog had risen, and the town and river were steeped in
+its thick, gray damp; but overhead, the sun-touched smoke-clouds opened
+like a cleft ocean,--shifting, rolling seas of crimson mist, waves of
+billowy silver veined with blood-scarlet, inner depths unfathomable of
+glancing light. Wolfe's artist-eye grew drunk with color. The gates of
+that other world! Fading, flashing before him now! What, in that world
+of Beauty, Content, and Right, were the petty laws, the mine and thine,
+of mill-owners and mill hands?
+
+A consciousness of power stirred within him. He stood up. A man,--he
+thought, stretching out his hands,--free to work, to live, to love!
+Free! His right! He folded the scrap of paper in his hand. As his
+nervous fingers took it in, limp and blotted, so his soul took in the
+mean temptation, lapped it in fancied rights, in dreams of improved
+existences, drifting and endless as the cloud-seas of color. Clutching
+it, as if the tightness of his hold would strengthen his sense of
+possession, he went aimlessly down the street. It was his watch at the
+mill. He need not go, need never go again, thank God!--shaking off the
+thought with unspeakable loathing.
+
+Shall I go over the history of the hours of that night? how the
+man wandered from one to another of his old haunts, with a
+half-consciousness of bidding them farewell,--lanes and alleys and
+back-yards where the mill-hands lodged,--noting, with a new eagerness,
+the filth and drunkenness, the pig-pens, the ash-heaps covered with
+potato-skins, the bloated, pimpled women at the doors, with a new
+disgust, a new sense of sudden triumph, and, under all, a new, vague
+dread, unknown before, smothered down, kept under, but still there? It
+left him but once during the night, when, for the second time in his
+life, he entered a church. It was a sombre Gothic pile, where the
+stained light lost itself in far-retreating arches; built to meet the
+requirements and sympathies of a far other class than Wolfe's. Yet
+it touched, moved him uncontrollably. The distances, the shadows, the
+still, marble figures, the mass of silent kneeling worshippers, the
+mysterious music, thrilled, lifted his soul with a wonderful pain.
+Wolfe forgot himself, forgot the new life he was going to live, the mean
+terror gnawing underneath. The voice of the speaker strengthened the
+charm; it was clear, feeling, full, strong. An old man, who had lived
+much, suffered much; whose brain was keenly alive, dominant; whose heart
+was summer-warm with charity. He taught it to-night. He held up Humanity
+in its grand total; showed the great world-cancer to his people. Who
+could show it better? He was a Christian reformer; he had studied the
+age thoroughly; his outlook at man had been free, world-wide, over all
+time. His faith stood sublime upon the Rock of Ages; his fiery zeal
+guided vast schemes by which the Gospel was to be preached to all
+nations. How did he preach it to-night? In burning, light-laden words he
+painted Jesus, the incarnate Life, Love, the universal Man: words
+that became reality in the lives of these people,--that lived again in
+beautiful words and actions, trifling, but heroic. Sin, as he defined
+it, was a real foe to them; their trials, temptations, were his. His
+words passed far over the furnace-tender's grasp, toned to suit another
+class of culture; they sounded in his ears a very pleasant song in an
+unknown tongue. He meant to cure this world-cancer with a steady eye
+that had never glared with hunger, and a hand that neither poverty nor
+strychnine-whiskey had taught to shake. In this morbid, distorted heart
+of the Welsh puddler he had failed.
+
+Eighteen centuries ago, the Master of this man tried reform in the
+streets of a city as crowded and vile as this, and did not fail.
+His disciple, showing Him to-night to cultured hearers, showing the
+clearness of the God-power acting through Him, shrank back from one
+coarse fact; that in birth and habit the man Christ was thrown up from
+the lowest of the people: his flesh, their flesh; their blood, his
+blood; tempted like them, to brutalize day by day; to lie, to steal: the
+actual slime and want of their hourly life, and the wine-press he trod
+alone.
+
+Yet, is there no meaning in this perpetually covered truth? If the son
+of the carpenter had stood in the church that night, as he stood with
+the fishermen and harlots by the sea of Galilee, before His Father and
+their Father, despised and rejected of men, without a place to lay His
+head, wounded for their iniquities, bruised for their transgressions,
+would not that hungry mill-boy at least, in the back seat, have “known
+the man”? That Jesus did not stand there.
+
+Wolfe rose at last, and turned from the church down the street. He
+looked up; the night had come on foggy, damp; the golden mists had
+vanished, and the sky lay dull and ash-colored. He wandered again
+aimlessly down the street, idly wondering what had become of the
+cloud-sea of crimson and scarlet. The trial-day of this man's life
+was over, and he had lost the victory. What followed was mere drifting
+circumstance,--a quicker walking over the path,--that was all. Do you
+want to hear the end of it? You wish me to make a tragic story out of
+it? Why, in the police-reports of the morning paper you can find a dozen
+such tragedies: hints of shipwrecks unlike any that ever befell on the
+high seas; hints that here a power was lost to heaven,--that there a
+soul went down where no tide can ebb or flow. Commonplace enough the
+hints are,--jocose sometimes, done up in rhyme.
+
+Doctor May a month after the night I have told you of, was reading to
+his wife at breakfast from this fourth column of the morning-paper:
+an unusual thing,--these police-reports not being, in general, choice
+reading for ladies; but it was only one item he read.
+
+“Oh, my dear! You remember that man I told you of, that we saw at
+Kirby's mill?--that was arrested for robbing Mitchell? Here he is; just
+listen:--'Circuit Court. Judge Day. Hugh Wolfe, operative in Kirby &
+John's Loudon Mills. Charge, grand larceny. Sentence, nineteen years
+hard labor in penitentiary. Scoundrel! Serves him right! After all our
+kindness that night! Picking Mitchell's pocket at the very time!”
+
+His wife said something about the ingratitude of that kind of people,
+and then they began to talk of something else.
+
+Nineteen years! How easy that was to read! What a simple word for Judge
+Day to utter! Nineteen years! Half a lifetime!
+
+Hugh Wolfe sat on the window-ledge of his cell, looking out. His ankles
+Were ironed. Not usual in such cases; but he had made two desperate
+efforts to escape. “Well,” as Haley, the jailer, said, “small blame
+to him! Nineteen years' imprisonment was not a pleasant thing to look
+forward to.” Haley was very good-natured about it, though Wolfe had
+fought him savagely.
+
+“When he was first caught,” the jailer said afterwards, in telling the
+story, “before the trial, the fellow was cut down at once,--laid there
+on that pallet like a dead man, with his hands over his eyes. Never saw
+a man so cut down in my life. Time of the trial, too, came the queerest
+dodge of any customer I ever had. Would choose no lawyer. Judge gave him
+one, of course. Gibson it Was. He tried to prove the fellow crazy; but
+it wouldn't go. Thing was plain as daylight: money found on him. 'T was
+a hard sentence,--all the law allows; but it was for 'xample's sake.
+These mill-hands are gettin' onbearable. When the sentence was read, he
+just looked up, and said the money was his by rights, and that all the
+world had gone wrong. That night, after the trial, a gentleman came to
+see him here, name of Mitchell,--him as he stole from. Talked to him for
+an hour. Thought he came for curiosity, like. After he was gone, thought
+Wolfe was remarkable quiet, and went into his cell. Found him very low;
+bed all bloody. Doctor said he had been bleeding at the lungs. He was
+as weak as a cat; yet if ye'll b'lieve me, he tried to get a-past me and
+get out. I just carried him like a baby, and threw him on the pallet.
+Three days after, he tried it again: that time reached the wall. Lord
+help you! he fought like a tiger,--giv' some terrible blows. Fightin'
+for life, you see; for he can't live long, shut up in the stone crib
+down yonder. Got a death-cough now. 'T took two of us to bring him down
+that day; so I just put the irons on his feet. There he sits, in there.
+Goin' to-morrow, with a batch more of 'em. That woman, hunchback, tried
+with him,--you remember?--she's only got three years. 'Complice. But
+she's a woman, you know. He's been quiet ever since I put on irons:
+giv' up, I suppose. Looks white, sick-lookin'. It acts different on 'em,
+bein' sentenced. Most of 'em gets reckless, devilish-like. Some prays
+awful, and sings them vile songs of the mills, all in a breath. That
+woman, now, she's desper't'. Been beggin' to see Hugh, as she calls him,
+for three days. I'm a-goin' to let her in. She don't go with him. Here
+she is in this next cell. I'm a-goin' now to let her in.”
+
+He let her in. Wolfe did not see her. She crept into a corner of the
+cell, and stood watching him. He was scratching the iron bars of
+the window with a piece of tin which he had picked up, with an idle,
+uncertain, vacant stare, just as a child or idiot would do.
+
+“Tryin' to get out, old boy?” laughed Haley. “Them irons will need a
+crow-bar beside your tin, before you can open 'em.”
+
+Wolfe laughed, too, in a senseless way.
+
+“I think I'll get out,” he said.
+
+“I believe his brain's touched,” said Haley, when he came out.
+
+The puddler scraped away with the tin for half an hour. Still Deborah
+did not speak. At last she ventured nearer, and touched his arm.
+
+“Blood?” she said, looking at some spots on his coat with a shudder.
+
+He looked up at her, “Why, Deb!” he said, smiling,--such a bright,
+boyish smile, that it Went to poor Deborah's heart directly, and she
+sobbed and cried out loud.
+
+“Oh, Hugh, lad! Hugh! dunnot look at me, when it wur my fault! To think
+I brought hur to it! And I loved hur so! Oh lad, I dud!”
+
+The confession, even In this wretch, came with the woman's blush through
+the sharp cry.
+
+He did not seem to hear her,--scraping away diligently at the bars with
+the bit of tin.
+
+Was he going mad? She peered closely into his face. Something she saw
+there made her draw suddenly back,--something which Haley had not seen,
+that lay beneath the pinched, vacant look it had caught since the trial,
+or the curious gray shadow that rested on it. That gray shadow,--yes,
+she knew what that meant. She had often seen it creeping over women's
+faces for months, who died at last of slow hunger or consumption. That
+meant death, distant, lingering: but this--Whatever it was the woman
+saw, or thought she saw, used as she was to crime and misery, seemed to
+make her sick with a new horror. Forgetting her fear of him, she caught
+his shoulders, and looked keenly, steadily, into his eyes.
+
+“Hugh!” she cried, in a desperate whisper,--“oh, boy, not that! for
+God's sake, not that!”
+
+The vacant laugh went off his face, and he answered her in a muttered
+word or two that drove her away. Yet the words were kindly enough.
+Sitting there on his pallet, she cried silently a hopeless sort of
+tears, but did not speak again. The man looked up furtively at her now
+and then. Whatever his own trouble was, her distress vexed him with a
+momentary sting.
+
+It was market-day. The narrow window of the jail looked down directly on
+the carts and wagons drawn up in a long line, where they had unloaded.
+He could see, too, and hear distinctly the clink of money as it changed
+hands, the busy crowd of whites and blacks shoving, pushing one another,
+and the chaffering and swearing at the stalls. Somehow, the sound, more
+than anything else had done, wakened him up,--made the whole real to
+him. He was done with the world and the business of it. He let the tin
+fall, and looked out, pressing his face close to the rusty bars. How
+they crowded and pushed! And he,--he should never walk that pavement
+again! There came Neff Sanders, one of the feeders at the mill, with
+a basket on his arm. Sure enough, Nyeff was married the other week. He
+whistled, hoping he would look up; but he did not. He wondered if Neff
+remembered he was there,--if any of the boys thought of him up there,
+and thought that he never was to go down that old cinder-road again.
+Never again! He had not quite understood it before; but now he did. Not
+for days or years, but never!--that was it.
+
+How clear the light fell on that stall in front of the market! and how
+like a picture it was, the dark-green heaps of corn, and the crimson
+beets, and golden melons! There was another with game: how the light
+flickered on that pheasant's breast, with the purplish blood dripping
+over the brown feathers! He could see the red shining of the drops, it
+was so near. In one minute he could be down there. It was just a step.
+So easy, as it seemed, so natural to go! Yet it could never be--not in
+all the thousands of years to come--that he should put his foot on that
+street again! He thought of himself with a sorrowful pity, as of some
+one else. There was a dog down in the market, walking after his master
+with such a stately, grave look!--only a dog, yet he could go backwards
+and forwards just as he pleased: he had good luck! Why, the very vilest
+cur, yelping there in the gutter, had not lived his life, had been free
+to act out whatever thought God had put into his brain; while he--No, he
+would not think of that! He tried to put the thought away, and to listen
+to a dispute between a countryman and a woman about some meat; but it
+would come back. He, what had he done to bear this?
+
+Then came the sudden picture of what might have been, and now. He knew
+what it was to be in the penitentiary, how it went with men there. He
+knew how in these long years he should slowly die, but not until soul
+and body had become corrupt and rotten,--how, when he came out, if he
+lived to come, even the lowest of the mill-hands would jeer him,--how
+his hands would be weak, and his brain senseless and stupid. He believed
+he was almost that now. He put his hand to his head, with a puzzled,
+weary look. It ached, his head, with thinking. He tried to quiet
+himself. It was only right, perhaps; he had done wrong. But was there
+right or wrong for such as he? What was right? And who had ever taught
+him? He thrust the whole matter away. A dark, cold quiet crept through
+his brain. It was all wrong; but let it be! It was nothing to him more
+than the others. Let it be!
+
+The door grated, as Haley opened it.
+
+“Come, my woman! Must lock up for t' night. Come, stir yerself!”
+
+She went up and took Hugh's hand.
+
+“Good-night, Deb,” he said, carelessly.
+
+She had not hoped he would say more; but the tired pain on her mouth
+just then was bitterer than death. She took his passive hand and kissed
+it.
+
+“Hur'll never see Deb again!” she ventured, her lips growing colder and
+more bloodless.
+
+What did she say that for? Did he not know it? Yet he would not be
+impatient with poor old Deb. She had trouble of her own, as well as he.
+
+“No, never again,” he said, trying to be cheerful.
+
+She stood just a moment, looking at him. Do you laugh at her, standing
+there, with her hunchback, her rags, her bleared, withered face, and the
+great despised love tugging at her heart?
+
+“Come, you!” called Haley, impatiently.
+
+She did not move.
+
+“Hugh!” she whispered.
+
+It was to be her last word. What was it?
+
+“Hugh, boy, not THAT!”
+
+He did not answer. She wrung her hands, trying to be silent, looking in
+his face in an agony of entreaty. He smiled again, kindly.
+
+“It is best, Deb. I cannot bear to be hurted any more.
+
+“Hur knows,” she said, humbly.
+
+“Tell my father good-bye; and--and kiss little Janey.”
+
+She nodded, saying nothing, looked in his face again, and went out of
+the door. As she went, she staggered.
+
+“Drinkin' to-day?” broke out Haley, pushing her before him. “Where the
+Devil did you get it? Here, in with ye!” and he shoved her into her
+cell, next to Wolfe's, and shut the door.
+
+Along the wall of her cell there was a crack low down by the floor,
+through which she could see the light from Wolfe's. She had discovered
+it days before. She hurried in now, and, kneeling down by it, listened,
+hoping to hear some sound. Nothing but the rasping of the tin on the
+bars. He was at his old amusement again. Something in the noise jarred
+on her ear, for she shivered as she heard it. Hugh rasped away at the
+bars. A dull old bit of tin, not fit to cut korl with.
+
+He looked out of the window again. People were leaving the market now.
+A tall mulatto girl, following her mistress, her basket on her head,
+crossed the street just below, and looked up. She was laughing; but,
+when she caught sight of the haggard face peering out through the bars,
+suddenly grew grave, and hurried by. A free, firm step, a clear-cut
+olive face, with a scarlet turban tied on one side, dark, shining eyes,
+and on the head the basket poised, filled with fruit and flowers, under
+which the scarlet turban and bright eyes looked out half-shadowed. The
+picture caught his eye. It was good to see a face like that. He would
+try to-morrow, and cut one like it. To-morrow! He threw down the tin,
+trembling, and covered his face with his hands. When he looked up again,
+the daylight was gone.
+
+Deborah, crouching near by on the other side of the wall, heard no
+noise. He sat on the side of the low pallet, thinking. Whatever was the
+mystery which the woman had seen on his face, it came out now slowly,
+in the dark there, and became fixed,--a something never seen on his face
+before. The evening was darkening fast. The market had been over for an
+hour; the rumbling of the carts over the pavement grew more infrequent:
+he listened to each, as it passed, because he thought it was to be for
+the last time. For the same reason, it was, I suppose, that he strained
+his eyes to catch a glimpse of each passer-by, wondering who they were,
+what kind of homes they were going to, if they had children,--listening
+eagerly to every chance word in the street, as if--(God be merciful to
+the man! what strange fancy was this?)--as if he never should hear human
+voices again.
+
+It was quite dark at last. The street was a lonely one. The last
+passenger, he thought, was gone. No,--there was a quick step: Joe Hill,
+lighting the lamps. Joe was a good old chap; never passed a fellow
+without some joke or other. He remembered once seeing the place where
+he lived with his wife. “Granny Hill” the boys called her. Bedridden she
+Was; but so kind as Joe was to her! kept the room so clean!--and the old
+woman, when he was there, was laughing at some of “t' lad's foolishness.”
+ The step was far down the street; but he could see him place the ladder,
+run up, and light the gas. A longing seized him to be spoken to once
+more.
+
+“Joe!” he called, out of the grating. “Good-bye, Joe!”
+
+The old man stopped a moment, listening uncertainly; then hurried
+on. The prisoner thrust his hand out of the window, and called again,
+louder; but Joe was too far down the street. It was a little thing; but
+it hurt him,--this disappointment.
+
+“Good-bye, Joe!” he called, sorrowfully enough.
+
+“Be quiet!” said one of the jailers, passing the door, striking on it
+with his club.
+
+Oh, that was the last, was it?
+
+There was an inexpressible bitterness on his face, as he lay down on the
+bed, taking the bit of tin, which he had rasped to a tolerable degree
+of sharpness, in his hand,--to play with, it may be. He bared his arms,
+looking intently at their corded veins and sinews. Deborah, listening in
+the next cell, heard a slight clicking sound, often repeated. She shut
+her lips tightly, that she might not scream; the cold drops of sweat
+broke over her, in her dumb agony.
+
+“Hur knows best,” she muttered at last, fiercely clutching the boards
+where she lay.
+
+If she could have seen Wolfe, there was nothing about him to frighten
+her. He lay quite still, his arms outstretched, looking at the pearly
+stream of moonlight coming into the window. I think in that one hour
+that came then he lived back over all the years that had gone before.
+I think that all the low, vile life, all his wrongs, all his starved
+hopes, came then, and stung him with a farewell poison that made him
+sick unto death. He made neither moan nor cry, only turned his worn
+face now and then to the pure light, that seemed so far off, as one that
+said, “How long, O Lord? how long?”
+
+The hour was over at last. The moon, passing over her nightly path,
+slowly came nearer, and threw the light across his bed on his feet. He
+watched it steadily, as it crept up, inch by inch, slowly. It seemed to
+him to carry with it a great silence. He had been so hot and tired there
+always in the mills! The years had been so fierce and cruel! There was
+coming now quiet and coolness and sleep. His tense limbs relaxed, and
+settled in a calm languor. The blood ran fainter and slow from his
+heart. He did not think now with a savage anger of what might be and was
+not; he was conscious only of deep stillness creeping over him. At first
+he saw a sea of faces: the mill-men,--women he had known, drunken and
+bloated,--Janey's timid and pitiful-poor old Debs: then they floated
+together like a mist, and faded away, leaving only the clear, pearly
+moonlight.
+
+Whether, as the pure light crept up the stretched-out figure, it brought
+with It calm and peace, who shall say? His dumb soul was alone with
+God in judgment. A Voice may have spoken for it from far-off Calvary,
+“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!” Who dare say?
+Fainter and fainter the heart rose and fell, slower and slower the moon
+floated from behind a cloud, until, when at last its full tide of white
+splendor swept over the cell, it seemed to wrap and fold into a deeper
+stillness the dead figure that never should move again. Silence deeper
+than the Night! Nothing that moved, save the black, nauseous stream of
+blood dripping slowly from the pallet to the floor!
+
+There was outcry and crowd enough in the cell the next day. The coroner
+and his jury, the local editors, Kirby himself, and boys with their
+hands thrust knowingly into their pockets and heads on one side, jammed
+into the corners. Coming and going all day. Only one woman. She
+came late, and outstayed them all. A Quaker, or Friend, as they call
+themselves. I think this woman Was known by that name in heaven. A
+homely body, coarsely dressed in gray and white. Deborah (for Haley had
+let her in) took notice of her. She watched them all--sitting on the
+end of the pallet, holding his head in her arms with the ferocity of a
+watch-dog, if any of them touched the body. There was no meekness, no
+sorrow, in her face; the stuff out of which murderers are made, instead.
+All the time Haley and the woman were laying straight the limbs and
+cleaning the cell, Deborah sat still, keenly watching the Quaker's face.
+Of all the crowd there that day, this woman alone had not spoken to
+her,--only once or twice had put some cordial to her lips. After they
+all were gone, the woman, in the same still, gentle way, brought a vase
+of wood-leaves and berries, and placed it by the pallet, then opened the
+narrow window. The fresh air blew in, and swept the woody fragrance over
+the dead face, Deborah looked up with a quick wonder.
+
+“Did hur know my boy wud like it? Did hur know Hugh?”
+
+“I know Hugh now.”
+
+The white fingers passed in a slow, pitiful way over the dead, worn
+face. There was a heavy shadow in the quiet eyes.
+
+“Did hur know where they'll bury Hugh?” said Deborah in a shrill tone,
+catching her arm.
+
+This had been the question hanging on her lips all day.
+
+“In t' town-yard? Under t' mud and ash? T' lad'll smother, woman! He wur
+born in t' lane moor, where t' air is frick and strong. Take hur out,
+for God's sake, take hur out where t' air blows!”
+
+The Quaker hesitated, but only for a moment. She put her strong arm
+around Deborah and led her to the window.
+
+“Thee sees the hills, friend, over the river? Thee sees how the
+light lies warm there, and the winds of God blow all the day? I live
+there,--where the blue smoke is, by the trees. Look at me,” She turned
+Deborah's face to her own, clear and earnest, “Thee will believe me? I
+will take Hugh and bury him there to-morrow.”
+
+Deborah did not doubt her. As the evening wore on, she leaned against
+the iron bars, looking at the hills that rose far off, through the thick
+sodden clouds, like a bright, unattainable calm. As she looked, a shadow
+of their solemn repose fell on her face; its fierce discontent faded
+into a pitiful, humble quiet. Slow, solemn tears gathered in her eyes:
+the poor weak eyes turned so hopelessly to the place where Hugh was to
+rest, the grave heights looking higher and brighter and more solemn than
+ever before. The Quaker watched her keenly. She came to her at last, and
+touched her arm.
+
+“When thee comes back,” she said, in a low, sorrowful tone, like one
+who speaks from a strong heart deeply moved with remorse or pity, “thee
+shall begin thy life again,--there on the hills. I came too late; but
+not for thee,--by God's help, it may be.”
+
+Not too late. Three years after, the Quaker began her work. I end my
+story here. At evening-time it was light. There is no need to tire
+you with the long years of sunshine, and fresh air, and slow, patient
+Christ-love, needed to make healthy and hopeful this impure body and
+soul. There is a homely pine house, on one of these hills, whose windows
+overlook broad, wooded slopes and clover-crimsoned meadows,--niched into
+the very place where the light is warmest, the air freest. It is the
+Friends' meeting-house. Once a week they sit there, in their grave,
+earnest way, waiting for the Spirit of Love to speak, opening their
+simple hearts to receive His words. There is a woman, old, deformed, who
+takes a humble place among them: waiting like them: in her gray dress,
+her worn face, pure and meek, turned now and then to the sky. A woman
+much loved by these silent, restful people; more silent than they, more
+humble, more loving. Waiting: with her eyes turned to hills higher
+and purer than these on which she lives, dim and far off now, but to be
+reached some day. There may be in her heart some latent hope to meet
+there the love denied her here,--that she shall find him whom she lost,
+and that then she will not be all-unworthy. Who blames her? Something
+is lost in the passage of every soul from one eternity to the
+other,--something pure and beautiful, which might have been and was not:
+a hope, a talent, a love, over which the soul mourns, like Esau deprived
+of his birthright. What blame to the meek Quaker, if she took her lost
+hope to make the hills of heaven more fair?
+
+Nothing remains to tell that the poor Welsh puddler once lived, but this
+figure of the mill-woman cut in korl. I have it here in a corner of my
+library. I keep it hid behind a curtain,--it is such a rough, ungainly
+thing. Yet there are about it touches, grand sweeps of outline, that
+show a master's hand. Sometimes,--to-night, for instance,--the
+curtain is accidentally drawn back, and I see a bare arm stretched out
+imploringly in the darkness, and an eager, wolfish face watching mine: a
+wan, woful face, through which the spirit of the dead korl-cutter looks
+out, with its thwarted life, its mighty hunger, its unfinished work. Its
+pale, vague lips seem to tremble with a terrible question. “Is this the
+End?” they say,--“nothing beyond? no more?” Why, you tell me you have
+seen that look in the eyes of dumb brutes,--horses dying under the lash.
+I know.
+
+The deep of the night is passing while I write. The gas-light wakens
+from the shadows here and there the objects which lie scattered through
+the room: only faintly, though; for they belong to the open sunlight. As
+I glance at them, they each recall some task or pleasure of the coming
+day. A half-moulded child's head; Aphrodite; a bough of forest-leaves;
+music; work; homely fragments, in which lie the secrets of all eternal
+truth and beauty. Prophetic all! Only this dumb, woful face seems to
+belong to and end with the night. I turn to look at it. Has the power
+of its desperate need commanded the darkness away? While the room is yet
+steeped in heavy shadow, a cool, gray light suddenly touches its head
+like a blessing hand, and its groping arm points through the broken
+cloud to the far East, where, in the flickering, nebulous crimson, God
+has set the promise of the Dawn.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Life in the Iron-Mills, by Rebecca Harding Davis
+
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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+
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+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      Life in the Iron-mills, by Rebecca Harding Davis
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+Project Gutenberg's Life in the Iron-Mills, by Rebecca Harding Davis
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Life in the Iron-Mills
+
+Author: Rebecca Harding Davis
+
+Release Date: July 27, 2008 [EBook #876]
+Last Updated: March 4, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE IN THE IRON-MILLS ***
+
+
+
+Produced by an Anonymous Volunteer and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      LIFE IN THE IRON-MILLS
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      by Rebecca Harding Davis
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                     &ldquo;Is this the end?
+                     O Life, as futile, then, as frail!
+                     What hope of answer or redress?&rdquo;
+       </pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A cloudy day: do you know what that is in a town of iron-works? The sky
+      sank down before dawn, muddy, flat, immovable. The air is thick, clammy
+      with the breath of crowded human beings. It stifles me. I open the window,
+      and, looking out, can scarcely see through the rain the grocer's shop
+      opposite, where a crowd of drunken Irishmen are puffing Lynchburg tobacco
+      in their pipes. I can detect the scent through all the foul smells ranging
+      loose in the air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The idiosyncrasy of this town is smoke. It rolls sullenly in slow folds
+      from the great chimneys of the iron-foundries, and settles down in black,
+      slimy pools on the muddy streets. Smoke on the wharves, smoke on the dingy
+      boats, on the yellow river,&mdash;clinging in a coating of greasy soot to
+      the house-front, the two faded poplars, the faces of the passers-by. The
+      long train of mules, dragging masses of pig-iron through the narrow
+      street, have a foul vapor hanging to their reeking sides. Here, inside, is
+      a little broken figure of an angel pointing upward from the mantel-shelf;
+      but even its wings are covered with smoke, clotted and black. Smoke
+      everywhere! A dirty canary chirps desolately in a cage beside me. Its
+      dream of green fields and sunshine is a very old dream,&mdash;almost worn
+      out, I think.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the back-window I can see a narrow brick-yard sloping down to the
+      river-side, strewed with rain-butts and tubs. The river, dull and
+      tawny-colored, (la belle riviere!) drags itself sluggishly along, tired of
+      the heavy weight of boats and coal-barges. What wonder? When I was a
+      child, I used to fancy a look of weary, dumb appeal upon the face of the
+      negro-like river slavishly bearing its burden day after day. Something of
+      the same idle notion comes to me to-day, when from the street-window I
+      look on the slow stream of human life creeping past, night and morning, to
+      the great mills. Masses of men, with dull, besotted faces bent to the
+      ground, sharpened here and there by pain or cunning; skin and muscle and
+      flesh begrimed with smoke and ashes; stooping all night over boiling
+      caldrons of metal, laired by day in dens of drunkenness and infamy;
+      breathing from infancy to death an air saturated with fog and grease and
+      soot, vileness for soul and body. What do you make of a case like that,
+      amateur psychologist? You call it an altogether serious thing to be alive:
+      to these men it is a drunken jest, a joke,&mdash;horrible to angels
+      perhaps, to them commonplace enough. My fancy about the river was an idle
+      one: it is no type of such a life. What if it be stagnant and slimy here?
+      It knows that beyond there waits for it odorous sunlight, quaint old
+      gardens, dusky with soft, green foliage of apple-trees, and flushing
+      crimson with roses,&mdash;air, and fields, and mountains. The future of
+      the Welsh puddler passing just now is not so pleasant. To be stowed away,
+      after his grimy work is done, in a hole in the muddy graveyard, and after
+      that, not air, nor green fields, nor curious roses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Can you see how foggy the day is? As I stand here, idly tapping the
+      windowpane, and looking out through the rain at the dirty back-yard and
+      the coalboats below, fragments of an old story float up before me,&mdash;a
+      story of this house into which I happened to come to-day. You may think it
+      a tiresome story enough, as foggy as the day, sharpened by no sudden
+      flashes of pain or pleasure.&mdash;I know: only the outline of a dull
+      life, that long since, with thousands of dull lives like its own, was
+      vainly lived and lost: thousands of them, massed, vile, slimy lives, like
+      those of the torpid lizards in yonder stagnant water-butt.&mdash;Lost?
+      There is a curious point for you to settle, my friend, who study
+      psychology in a lazy, dilettante way. Stop a moment. I am going to be
+      honest. This is what I want you to do. I want you to hide your disgust,
+      take no heed to your clean clothes, and come right down with me,&mdash;here,
+      into the thickest of the fog and mud and foul effluvia. I want you to hear
+      this story. There is a secret down here, in this nightmare fog, that has
+      lain dumb for centuries: I want to make it a real thing to you. You,
+      Egoist, or Pantheist, or Arminian, busy in making straight paths for your
+      feet on the hills, do not see it clearly,&mdash;this terrible question
+      which men here have gone mad and died trying to answer. I dare not put
+      this secret into words. I told you it was dumb. These men, going by with
+      drunken faces and brains full of unawakened power, do not ask it of
+      Society or of God. Their lives ask it; their deaths ask it. There is no
+      reply. I will tell you plainly that I have a great hope; and I bring it to
+      you to be tested. It is this: that this terrible dumb question is its own
+      reply; that it is not the sentence of death we think it, but, from the
+      very extremity of its darkness, the most solemn prophecy which the world
+      has known of the Hope to come. I dare make my meaning no clearer, but will
+      only tell my story. It will, perhaps, seem to you as foul and dark as this
+      thick vapor about us, and as pregnant with death; but if your eyes are
+      free as mine are to look deeper, no perfume-tinted dawn will be so fair
+      with promise of the day that shall surely come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My story is very simple,&mdash;Only what I remember of the life of one of
+      these men,&mdash;a furnace-tender in one of Kirby &amp; John's
+      rolling-mills,&mdash;Hugh Wolfe. You know the mills? They took the great
+      order for the lower Virginia railroads there last winter; run usually with
+      about a thousand men. I cannot tell why I choose the half-forgotten story
+      of this Wolfe more than that of myriads of these furnace-hands. Perhaps
+      because there is a secret, underlying sympathy between that story and this
+      day with its impure fog and thwarted sunshine,&mdash;or perhaps simply for
+      the reason that this house is the one where the Wolfes lived. There were
+      the father and son,&mdash;both hands, as I said, in one of Kirby &amp;
+      John's mills for making railroad-iron,&mdash;and Deborah, their cousin, a
+      picker in some of the cotton-mills. The house was rented then to half a
+      dozen families. The Wolfes had two of the cellar-rooms. The old man, like
+      many of the puddlers and feeders of the mills, was Welsh,&mdash;had spent
+      half of his life in the Cornish tin-mines. You may pick the Welsh
+      emigrants, Cornish miners, out of the throng passing the windows, any day.
+      They are a trifle more filthy; their muscles are not so brawny; they stoop
+      more. When they are drunk, they neither yell, nor shout, nor stagger, but
+      skulk along like beaten hounds. A pure, unmixed blood, I fancy: shows
+      itself in the slight angular bodies and sharply-cut facial lines. It is
+      nearly thirty years since the Wolfes lived here. Their lives were like
+      those of their class: incessant labor, sleeping in kennel-like rooms,
+      eating rank pork and molasses, drinking&mdash;God and the distillers only
+      know what; with an occasional night in jail, to atone for some drunken
+      excess. Is that all of their lives?&mdash;of the portion given to them and
+      these their duplicates swarming the streets to-day?&mdash;nothing beneath?&mdash;all?
+      So many a political reformer will tell you,&mdash;and many a private
+      reformer, too, who has gone among them with a heart tender with Christ's
+      charity, and come out outraged, hardened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One rainy night, about eleven o'clock, a crowd of half-clothed women
+      stopped outside of the cellar-door. They were going home from the
+      cotton-mill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-night, Deb,&rdquo; said one, a mulatto, steadying herself against the
+      gas-post. She needed the post to steady her. So did more than one of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dah's a ball to Miss Potts' to-night. Ye'd best come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Inteet, Deb, if hur'll come, hur'll hef fun,&rdquo; said a shrill Welsh voice
+      in the crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two or three dirty hands were thrust out to catch the gown of the woman,
+      who was groping for the latch of the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No? Where's Kit Small, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Begorra! on the spools. Alleys behint, though we helped her, we dud. An
+      wid ye! Let Deb alone! It's ondacent frettin' a quite body. Be the powers,
+      an we'll have a night of it! there'll be lashin's o' drink,&mdash;the
+      Vargent be blessed and praised for't!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They went on, the mulatto inclining for a moment to show fight, and drag
+      the woman Wolfe off with them; but, being pacified, she staggered away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deborah groped her way into the cellar, and, after considerable stumbling,
+      kindled a match, and lighted a tallow dip, that sent a yellow glimmer over
+      the room. It was low, damp,&mdash;the earthen floor covered with a green,
+      slimy moss,&mdash;a fetid air smothering the breath. Old Wolfe lay asleep
+      on a heap of straw, wrapped in a torn horse-blanket. He was a pale, meek
+      little man, with a white face and red rabbit-eyes. The woman Deborah was
+      like him; only her face was even more ghastly, her lips bluer, her eyes
+      more watery. She wore a faded cotton gown and a slouching bonnet. When she
+      walked, one could see that she was deformed, almost a hunchback. She trod
+      softly, so as not to waken him, and went through into the room beyond.
+      There she found by the half-extinguished fire an iron saucepan filled with
+      cold boiled potatoes, which she put upon a broken chair with a pint-cup of
+      ale. Placing the old candlestick beside this dainty repast, she untied her
+      bonnet, which hung limp and wet over her face, and prepared to eat her
+      supper. It was the first food that had touched her lips since morning.
+      There was enough of it, however: there is not always. She was hungry,&mdash;one
+      could see that easily enough,&mdash;and not drunk, as most of her
+      companions would have been found at this hour. She did not drink, this
+      woman,&mdash;her face told that, too,&mdash;nothing stronger than ale.
+      Perhaps the weak, flaccid wretch had some stimulant in her pale life to
+      keep her up,&mdash;some love or hope, it might be, or urgent need. When
+      that stimulant was gone, she would take to whiskey. Man cannot live by
+      work alone. While she was skinning the potatoes, and munching them, a
+      noise behind her made her stop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Janey!&rdquo; she called, lifting the candle and peering into the darkness.
+      &ldquo;Janey, are you there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A heap of ragged coats was heaved up, and the face of a young girl
+      emerged, staring sleepily at the woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Deborah,&rdquo; she said, at last, &ldquo;I'm here the night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, child. Hur's welcome,&rdquo; she said, quietly eating on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl's face was haggard and sickly; her eyes were heavy with sleep and
+      hunger: real Milesian eyes they were, dark, delicate blue, glooming out
+      from black shadows with a pitiful fright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was alone,&rdquo; she said, timidly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where's the father?&rdquo; asked Deborah, holding out a potato, which the girl
+      greedily seized.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's beyant,&mdash;wid Haley,&mdash;in the stone house.&rdquo; (Did you ever
+      hear the word tail from an Irish mouth?) &ldquo;I came here. Hugh told me never
+      to stay me-lone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hugh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A vexed frown crossed her face. The girl saw it, and added quickly,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have not seen Hugh the day, Deb. The old man says his watch lasts till
+      the mornin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The woman sprang up, and hastily began to arrange some bread and flitch in
+      a tin pail, and to pour her own measure of ale into a bottle. Tying on her
+      bonnet, she blew out the candle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lay ye down, Janey dear,&rdquo; she said, gently, covering her with the old
+      rags. &ldquo;Hur can eat the potatoes, if hur's hungry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are ye goin', Deb? The rain's sharp.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To the mill, with Hugh's supper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let him bide till th' morn. Sit ye down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo;&mdash;sharply pushing her off. &ldquo;The boy'll starve.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She hurried from the cellar, while the child wearily coiled herself up for
+      sleep. The rain was falling heavily, as the woman, pail in hand, emerged
+      from the mouth of the alley, and turned down the narrow street, that
+      stretched out, long and black, miles before her. Here and there a flicker
+      of gas lighted an uncertain space of muddy footwalk and gutter; the long
+      rows of houses, except an occasional lager-bier shop, were closed; now and
+      then she met a band of millhands skulking to or from their work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not many even of the inhabitants of a manufacturing town know the vast
+      machinery of system by which the bodies of workmen are governed, that goes
+      on unceasingly from year to year. The hands of each mill are divided into
+      watches that relieve each other as regularly as the sentinels of an army.
+      By night and day the work goes on, the unsleeping engines groan and
+      shriek, the fiery pools of metal boil and surge. Only for a day in the
+      week, in half-courtesy to public censure, the fires are partially veiled;
+      but as soon as the clock strikes midnight, the great furnaces break forth
+      with renewed fury, the clamor begins with fresh, breathless vigor, the
+      engines sob and shriek like &ldquo;gods in pain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As Deborah hurried down through the heavy rain, the noise of these
+      thousand engines sounded through the sleep and shadow of the city like
+      far-off thunder. The mill to which she was going lay on the river, a mile
+      below the city-limits. It was far, and she was weak, aching from standing
+      twelve hours at the spools. Yet it was her almost nightly walk to take
+      this man his supper, though at every square she sat down to rest, and she
+      knew she should receive small word of thanks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps, if she had possessed an artist's eye, the picturesque oddity of
+      the scene might have made her step stagger less, and the path seem
+      shorter; but to her the mills were only &ldquo;summat deilish to look at by
+      night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The road leading to the mills had been quarried from the solid rock, which
+      rose abrupt and bare on one side of the cinder-covered road, while the
+      river, sluggish and black, crept past on the other. The mills for rolling
+      iron are simply immense tent-like roofs, covering acres of ground, open on
+      every side. Beneath these roofs Deborah looked in on a city of fires, that
+      burned hot and fiercely in the night. Fire in every horrible form: pits of
+      flame waving in the wind; liquid metal-flames writhing in tortuous streams
+      through the sand; wide caldrons filled with boiling fire, over which bent
+      ghastly wretches stirring the strange brewing; and through all, crowds of
+      half-clad men, looking like revengeful ghosts in the red light, hurried,
+      throwing masses of glittering fire. It was like a street in Hell. Even
+      Deborah muttered, as she crept through, &ldquo;looks like t' Devil's place!&rdquo; It
+      did,&mdash;in more ways than one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She found the man she was looking for, at last, heaping coal on a furnace.
+      He had not time to eat his supper; so she went behind the furnace, and
+      waited. Only a few men were with him, and they noticed her only by a &ldquo;Hyur
+      comes t'hunchback, Wolfe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deborah was stupid with sleep; her back pained her sharply; and her teeth
+      chattered with cold, with the rain that soaked her clothes and dripped
+      from her at every step. She stood, however, patiently holding the pail,
+      and waiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hout, woman! ye look like a drowned cat. Come near to the fire,&rdquo;&mdash;said
+      one of the men, approaching to scrape away the ashes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head. Wolfe had forgotten her. He turned, hearing the man,
+      and came closer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did no' think; gi' me my supper, woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She watched him eat with a painful eagerness. With a woman's quick
+      instinct, she saw that he was not hungry,&mdash;was eating to please her.
+      Her pale, watery eyes began to gather a strange light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is't good, Hugh? T' ale was a bit sour, I feared.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, good enough.&rdquo; He hesitated a moment. &ldquo;Ye're tired, poor lass! Bide
+      here till I go. Lay down there on that heap of ash, and go to sleep.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He threw her an old coat for a pillow, and turned to his work. The heap
+      was the refuse of the burnt iron, and was not a hard bed; the
+      half-smothered warmth, too, penetrated her limbs, dulling their pain and
+      cold shiver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miserable enough she looked, lying there on the ashes like a limp, dirty
+      rag,&mdash;yet not an unfitting figure to crown the scene of hopeless
+      discomfort and veiled crime: more fitting, if one looked deeper into the
+      heart of things, at her thwarted woman's form, her colorless life, her
+      waking stupor that smothered pain and hunger,&mdash;even more fit to be a
+      type of her class. Deeper yet if one could look, was there nothing worth
+      reading in this wet, faded thing, halfcovered with ashes? no story of a
+      soul filled with groping passionate love, heroic unselfishness, fierce
+      jealousy? of years of weary trying to please the one human being whom she
+      loved, to gain one look of real heart-kindness from him? If anything like
+      this were hidden beneath the pale, bleared eyes, and dull,
+      washed-out-looking face, no one had ever taken the trouble to read its
+      faint signs: not the half-clothed furnace-tender, Wolfe, certainly. Yet he
+      was kind to her: it was his nature to be kind, even to the very rats that
+      swarmed in the cellar: kind to her in just the same way. She knew that.
+      And it might be that very knowledge had given to her face its apathy and
+      vacancy more than her low, torpid life. One sees that dead, vacant look
+      steal sometimes over the rarest, finest of women's faces,&mdash;in the
+      very midst, it may be, of their warmest summer's day; and then one can
+      guess at the secret of intolerable solitude that lies hid beneath the
+      delicate laces and brilliant smile. There was no warmth, no brilliancy, no
+      summer for this woman; so the stupor and vacancy had time to gnaw into her
+      face perpetually. She was young, too, though no one guessed it; so the
+      gnawing was the fiercer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She lay quiet in the dark corner, listening, through the monotonous din
+      and uncertain glare of the works, to the dull plash of the rain in the far
+      distance, shrinking back whenever the man Wolfe happened to look towards
+      her. She knew, in spite of all his kindness, that there was that in her
+      face and form which made him loathe the sight of her. She felt by
+      instinct, although she could not comprehend it, the finer nature of the
+      man, which made him among his fellow-workmen something unique, set apart.
+      She knew, that, down under all the vileness and coarseness of his life,
+      there was a groping passion for whatever was beautiful and pure, that his
+      soul sickened with disgust at her deformity, even when his words were
+      kindest. Through this dull consciousness, which never left her, came, like
+      a sting, the recollection of the dark blue eyes and lithe figure of the
+      little Irish girl she had left in the cellar. The recollection struck
+      through even her stupid intellect with a vivid glow of beauty and of
+      grace. Little Janey, timid, helpless, clinging to Hugh as her only friend:
+      that was the sharp thought, the bitter thought, that drove into the glazed
+      eyes a fierce light of pain. You laugh at it? Are pain and jealousy less
+      savage realities down here in this place I am taking you to than in your
+      own house or your own heart,&mdash;your heart, which they clutch at
+      sometimes? The note is the same, I fancy, be the octave high or low.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If you could go into this mill where Deborah lay, and drag out from the
+      hearts of these men the terrible tragedy of their lives, taking it as a
+      symptom of the disease of their class, no ghost Horror would terrify you
+      more. A reality of soul-starvation, of living death, that meets you every
+      day under the besotted faces on the street,&mdash;I can paint nothing of
+      this, only give you the outside outlines of a night, a crisis in the life
+      of one man: whatever muddy depth of soul-history lies beneath you can read
+      according to the eyes God has given you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wolfe, while Deborah watched him as a spaniel its master, bent over the
+      furnace with his iron pole, unconscious of her scrutiny, only stopping to
+      receive orders. Physically, Nature had promised the man but little. He had
+      already lost the strength and instinct vigor of a man, his muscles were
+      thin, his nerves weak, his face ( a meek, woman's face) haggard, yellow
+      with consumption. In the mill he was known as one of the girl-men: &ldquo;Molly
+      Wolfe&rdquo; was his sobriquet. He was never seen in the cockpit, did not own a
+      terrier, drank but seldom; when he did, desperately. He fought sometimes,
+      but was always thrashed, pommelled to a jelly. The man was game enough,
+      when his blood was up: but he was no favorite in the mill; he had the
+      taint of school-learning on him,&mdash;not to a dangerous extent, only a
+      quarter or so in the free-school in fact, but enough to ruin him as a good
+      hand in a fight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For other reasons, too, he was not popular. Not one of themselves, they
+      felt that, though outwardly as filthy and ash-covered; silent, with
+      foreign thoughts and longings breaking out through his quietness in
+      innumerable curious ways: this one, for instance. In the neighboring
+      furnace-buildings lay great heaps of the refuse from the ore after the
+      pig-metal is run. Korl we call it here: a light, porous substance, of a
+      delicate, waxen, flesh-colored tinge. Out of the blocks of this korl,
+      Wolfe, in his off-hours from the furnace, had a habit of chipping and
+      moulding figures,&mdash;hideous, fantastic enough, but sometimes strangely
+      beautiful: even the mill-men saw that, while they jeered at him. It was a
+      curious fancy in the man, almost a passion. The few hours for rest he
+      spent hewing and hacking with his blunt knife, never speaking, until his
+      watch came again,&mdash;working at one figure for months, and, when it was
+      finished, breaking it to pieces perhaps, in a fit of disappointment. A
+      morbid, gloomy man, untaught, unled, left to feed his soul in grossness
+      and crime, and hard, grinding labor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I want you to come down and look at this Wolfe, standing there among the
+      lowest of his kind, and see him just as he is, that you may judge him
+      justly when you hear the story of this night. I want you to look back, as
+      he does every day, at his birth in vice, his starved infancy; to remember
+      the heavy years he has groped through as boy and man,&mdash;the slow,
+      heavy years of constant, hot work. So long ago he began, that he thinks
+      sometimes he has worked there for ages. There is no hope that it will ever
+      end. Think that God put into this man's soul a fierce thirst for beauty,&mdash;to
+      know it, to create it; to be&mdash;something, he knows not what,&mdash;other
+      than he is. There are moments when a passing cloud, the sun glinting on
+      the purple thistles, a kindly smile, a child's face, will rouse him to a
+      passion of pain,&mdash;when his nature starts up with a mad cry of rage
+      against God, man, whoever it is that has forced this vile, slimy life upon
+      him. With all this groping, this mad desire, a great blind intellect
+      stumbling through wrong, a loving poet's heart, the man was by habit only
+      a coarse, vulgar laborer, familiar with sights and words you would blush
+      to name. Be just: when I tell you about this night, see him as he is. Be
+      just,&mdash;not like man's law, which seizes on one isolated fact, but
+      like God's judging angel, whose clear, sad eye saw all the countless
+      cankering days of this man's life, all the countless nights, when, sick
+      with starving, his soul fainted in him, before it judged him for this
+      night, the saddest of all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I called this night the crisis of his life. If it was, it stole on him
+      unawares. These great turning-days of life cast no shadow before, slip by
+      unconsciously. Only a trifle, a little turn of the rudder, and the ship
+      goes to heaven or hell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wolfe, while Deborah watched him, dug into the furnace of melting iron
+      with his pole, dully thinking only how many rails the lump would yield. It
+      was late,&mdash;nearly Sunday morning; another hour, and the heavy work
+      would be done, only the furnaces to replenish and cover for the next day.
+      The workmen were growing more noisy, shouting, as they had to do, to be
+      heard over the deep clamor of the mills. Suddenly they grew less
+      boisterous,&mdash;at the far end, entirely silent. Something unusual had
+      happened. After a moment, the silence came nearer; the men stopped their
+      jeers and drunken choruses. Deborah, stupidly lifting up her head, saw the
+      cause of the quiet. A group of five or six men were slowly approaching,
+      stopping to examine each furnace as they came. Visitors often came to see
+      the mills after night: except by growing less noisy, the men took no
+      notice of them. The furnace where Wolfe worked was near the bounds of the
+      works; they halted there hot and tired: a walk over one of these great
+      foundries is no trifling task. The woman, drawing out of sight, turned
+      over to sleep. Wolfe, seeing them stop, suddenly roused from his
+      indifferent stupor, and watched them keenly. He knew some of them: the
+      overseer, Clarke,&mdash;a son of Kirby, one of the mill-owners,&mdash;and
+      a Doctor May, one of the town-physicians. The other two were strangers.
+      Wolfe came closer. He seized eagerly every chance that brought him into
+      contact with this mysterious class that shone down on him perpetually with
+      the glamour of another order of being. What made the difference between
+      them? That was the mystery of his life. He had a vague notion that perhaps
+      to-night he could find it out. One of the strangers sat down on a pile of
+      bricks, and beckoned young Kirby to his side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is hot, with a vengeance. A match, please?&rdquo;&mdash;lighting his
+      cigar. &ldquo;But the walk is worth the trouble. If it were not that you must
+      have heard it so often, Kirby, I would tell you that your works look like
+      Dante's Inferno.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kirby laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Yonder is Farinata himself in the burning tomb,&rdquo;&mdash;pointing to
+      some figure in the shimmering shadows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Judging from some of the faces of your men,&rdquo; said the other, &ldquo;they bid
+      fair to try the reality of Dante's vision, some day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Young Kirby looked curiously around, as if seeing the faces of his hands
+      for the first time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're bad enough, that's true. A desperate set, I fancy. Eh, Clarke?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The overseer did not hear him. He was talking of net profits just then,&mdash;giving,
+      in fact, a schedule of the annual business of the firm to a sharp peering
+      little Yankee, who jotted down notes on a paper laid on the crown of his
+      hat: a reporter for one of the city-papers, getting up a series of reviews
+      of the leading manufactories. The other gentlemen had accompanied them
+      merely for amusement. They were silent until the notes were finished,
+      drying their feet at the furnaces, and sheltering their faces from the
+      intolerable heat. At last the overseer concluded with&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe that is a pretty fair estimate, Captain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, some of you men!&rdquo; said Kirby, &ldquo;bring up those boards. We may as
+      well sit down, gentlemen, until the rain is over. It cannot last much
+      longer at this rate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pig-metal,&rdquo;&mdash;mumbled the reporter,&mdash;&ldquo;um! coal facilities,&mdash;um!
+      hands employed, twelve hundred,&mdash;bitumen,&mdash;um!&mdash;all right,
+      I believe, Mr. Clarke;&mdash;sinking-fund,&mdash;what did you say was your
+      sinking-fund?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Twelve hundred hands?&rdquo; said the stranger, the young man who had first
+      spoken. &ldquo;Do you control their votes, Kirby?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Control? No.&rdquo; The young man smiled complacently. &ldquo;But my father brought
+      seven hundred votes to the polls for his candidate last November. No
+      force-work, you understand,&mdash;only a speech or two, a hint to form
+      themselves into a society, and a bit of red and blue bunting to make them
+      a flag. The Invincible Roughs,&mdash;I believe that is their name. I
+      forget the motto: 'Our country's hope,' I think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a laugh. The young man talking to Kirby sat with an amused light
+      in his cool gray eye, surveying critically the half-clothed figures of the
+      puddlers, and the slow swing of their brawny muscles. He was a stranger in
+      the city,&mdash;spending a couple of months in the borders of a Slave
+      State, to study the institutions of the South,&mdash;a brother-in-law of
+      Kirby's,&mdash;Mitchell. He was an amateur gymnast,&mdash;hence his
+      anatomical eye; a patron, in a blase' way, of the prize-ring; a man who
+      sucked the essence out of a science or philosophy in an indifferent,
+      gentlemanly way; who took Kant, Novalis, Humboldt, for what they were
+      worth in his own scales; accepting all, despising nothing, in heaven,
+      earth, or hell, but one-idead men; with a temper yielding and brilliant as
+      summer water, until his Self was touched, when it was ice, though
+      brilliant still. Such men are not rare in the States.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he knocked the ashes from his cigar, Wolfe caught with a quick pleasure
+      the contour of the white hand, the blood-glow of a red ring he wore. His
+      voice, too, and that of Kirby's, touched him like music,&mdash;low, even,
+      with chording cadences. About this man Mitchell hung the impalpable
+      atmosphere belonging to the thoroughbred gentleman, Wolfe, scraping away
+      the ashes beside him, was conscious of it, did obeisance to it with his
+      artist sense, unconscious that he did so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rain did not cease. Clarke and the reporter left the mills; the
+      others, comfortably seated near the furnace, lingered, smoking and talking
+      in a desultory way. Greek would not have been more unintelligible to the
+      furnace-tenders, whose presence they soon forgot entirely. Kirby drew out
+      a newspaper from his pocket and read aloud some article, which they
+      discussed eagerly. At every sentence, Wolfe listened more and more like a
+      dumb, hopeless animal, with a duller, more stolid look creeping over his
+      face, glancing now and then at Mitchell, marking acutely every smallest
+      sign of refinement, then back to himself, seeing as in a mirror his filthy
+      body, his more stained soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Never! He had no words for such a thought, but he knew now, in all the
+      sharpness of the bitter certainty, that between them there was a great
+      gulf never to be passed. Never!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bell of the mills rang for midnight. Sunday morning had dawned.
+      Whatever hidden message lay in the tolling bells floated past these men
+      unknown. Yet it was there. Veiled in the solemn music ushering the risen
+      Saviour was a key-note to solve the darkest secrets of a world gone wrong,&mdash;even
+      this social riddle which the brain of the grimy puddler grappled with
+      madly to-night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The men began to withdraw the metal from the caldrons. The mills were
+      deserted on Sundays, except by the hands who fed the fires, and those who
+      had no lodgings and slept usually on the ash-heaps. The three strangers
+      sat still during the next hour, watching the men cover the furnaces,
+      laughing now and then at some jest of Kirby's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know,&rdquo; said Mitchell, &ldquo;I like this view of the works better than
+      when the glare was fiercest? These heavy shadows and the amphitheatre of
+      smothered fires are ghostly, unreal. One could fancy these red smouldering
+      lights to be the half-shut eyes of wild beasts, and the spectral figures
+      their victims in the den.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kirby laughed. &ldquo;You are fanciful. Come, let us get out of the den. The
+      spectral figures, as you call them, are a little too real for me to fancy
+      a close proximity in the darkness,&mdash;unarmed, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The others rose, buttoning their overcoats, and lighting cigars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Raining, still,&rdquo; said Doctor May, &ldquo;and hard. Where did we leave the
+      coach, Mitchell?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At the other side of the works.&mdash;Kirby, what's that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mitchell started back, half-frightened, as, suddenly turning a corner, the
+      white figure of a woman faced him in the darkness,&mdash;a woman, white,
+      of giant proportions, crouching on the ground, her arms flung out in some
+      wild gesture of warning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop! Make that fire burn there!&rdquo; cried Kirby, stopping short.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The flame burst out, flashing the gaunt figure into bold relief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mitchell drew a long breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought it was alive,&rdquo; he said, going up curiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The others followed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not marble, eh?&rdquo; asked Kirby, touching it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the lower overseers stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Korl, Sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who did it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't say. Some of the hands; chipped it out in off-hours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Chipped to some purpose, I should say. What a flesh-tint the stuff has!
+      Do you see, Mitchell?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had stepped aside where the light fell boldest on the figure, looking
+      at it in silence. There was not one line of beauty or grace in it: a nude
+      woman's form, muscular, grown coarse with labor, the powerful limbs
+      instinct with some one poignant longing. One idea: there it was in the
+      tense, rigid muscles, the clutching hands, the wild, eager face, like that
+      of a starving wolf's. Kirby and Doctor May walked around it, critical,
+      curious. Mitchell stood aloof, silent. The figure touched him strangely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not badly done,&rdquo; said Doctor May, &ldquo;Where did the fellow learn that sweep
+      of the muscles in the arm and hand? Look at them! They are groping, do you
+      see?&mdash;clutching: the peculiar action of a man dying of thirst.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They have ample facilities for studying anatomy,&rdquo; sneered Kirby, glancing
+      at the half-naked figures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look,&rdquo; continued the Doctor, &ldquo;at this bony wrist, and the strained sinews
+      of the instep! A working-woman,&mdash;the very type of her class.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God forbid!&rdquo; muttered Mitchell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; demanded May, &ldquo;What does the fellow intend by the figure? I cannot
+      catch the meaning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask him,&rdquo; said the other, dryly, &ldquo;There he stands,&rdquo;&mdash;pointing to
+      Wolfe, who stood with a group of men, leaning on his ash-rake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Doctor beckoned him with the affable smile which kind-hearted men put
+      on, when talking to these people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Mitchell has picked you out as the man who did this,&mdash;I'm sure I
+      don't know why. But what did you mean by it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She be hungry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wolfe's eyes answered Mitchell, not the Doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh-h! But what a mistake you have made, my fine fellow! You have given no
+      sign of starvation to the body. It is strong,&mdash;terribly strong. It
+      has the mad, half-despairing gesture of drowning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wolfe stammered, glanced appealingly at Mitchell, who saw the soul of the
+      thing, he knew. But the cool, probing eyes were turned on himself now,&mdash;mocking,
+      cruel, relentless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not hungry for meat,&rdquo; the furnace-tender said at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What then? Whiskey?&rdquo; jeered Kirby, with a coarse laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wolfe was silent a moment, thinking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dunno,&rdquo; he said, with a bewildered look. &ldquo;It mebbe. Summat to make her
+      live, I think,&mdash;like you. Whiskey ull do it, in a way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man laughed again. Mitchell flashed a look of disgust somewhere,&mdash;not
+      at Wolfe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May,&rdquo; he broke out impatiently, &ldquo;are you blind? Look at that woman's
+      face! It asks questions of God, and says, 'I have a right to know,' Good
+      God, how hungry it is!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They looked a moment; then May turned to the mill-owner:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you many such hands as this? What are you going to do with them?
+      Keep them at puddling iron?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kirby shrugged his shoulders. Mitchell's look had irritated him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ce n'est pas mon affaire. I have no fancy for nursing infant geniuses. I
+      suppose there are some stray gleams of mind and soul among these wretches.
+      The Lord will take care of his own; or else they can work out their own
+      salvation. I have heard you call our American system a ladder which any
+      man can scale. Do you doubt it? Or perhaps you want to banish all social
+      ladders, and put us all on a flat table-land,&mdash;eh, May?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Doctor looked vexed, puzzled. Some terrible problem lay hid in this
+      woman's face, and troubled these men. Kirby waited for an answer, and,
+      receiving none, went on, warming with his subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tell you, there's something wrong that no talk of 'Liberte' or
+      'Egalite' will do away. If I had the making of men, these men who do the
+      lowest part of the world's work should be machines,&mdash;nothing more,&mdash;hands.
+      It would be kindness. God help them! What are taste, reason, to creatures
+      who must live such lives as that?&rdquo; He pointed to Deborah, sleeping on the
+      ash-heap. &ldquo;So many nerves to sting them to pain. What if God had put your
+      brain, with all its agony of touch, into your fingers, and bid you work
+      and strike with that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think you could govern the world better?&rdquo; laughed the Doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not think at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is true philosophy. Drift with the stream, because you cannot dive
+      deep enough to find bottom, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly,&rdquo; rejoined Kirby. &ldquo;I do not think. I wash my hands of all social
+      problems,&mdash;slavery, caste, white or black. My duty to my operatives
+      has a narrow limit,&mdash;the pay-hour on Saturday night. Outside of that,
+      if they cut korl, or cut each other's throats, (the more popular amusement
+      of the two,) I am not responsible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Doctor sighed,&mdash;a good honest sigh, from the depths of his
+      stomach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God help us! Who is responsible?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not I, I tell you,&rdquo; said Kirby, testily. &ldquo;What has the man who pays them
+      money to do with their souls' concerns, more than the grocer or butcher
+      who takes it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And yet,&rdquo; said Mitchell's cynical voice, &ldquo;look at her! How hungry she
+      is!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kirby tapped his boot with his cane. No one spoke. Only the dumb face of
+      the rough image looking into their faces with the awful question, &ldquo;What
+      shall we do to be saved?&rdquo; Only Wolfe's face, with its heavy weight of
+      brain, its weak, uncertain mouth, its desperate eyes, out of which looked
+      the soul of his class,&mdash;only Wolfe's face turned towards Kirby's.
+      Mitchell laughed,&mdash;a cool, musical laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Money has spoken!&rdquo; he said, seating himself lightly on a stone with the
+      air of an amused spectator at a play. &ldquo;Are you answered?&rdquo;&mdash;turning to
+      Wolfe his clear, magnetic face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bright and deep and cold as Arctic air, the soul of the man lay tranquil
+      beneath. He looked at the furnace-tender as he had looked at a rare mosaic
+      in the morning; only the man was the more amusing study of the two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you answered? Why, May, look at him! 'De profundis clamavi.' Or, to
+      quote in English, 'Hungry and thirsty, his soul faints in him.' And so
+      Money sends back its answer into the depths through you, Kirby! Very clear
+      the answer, too!&mdash;I think I remember reading the same words
+      somewhere: washing your hands in Eau de Cologne, and saying, 'I am
+      innocent of the blood of this man. See ye to it!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kirby flushed angrily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You quote Scripture freely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do I not quote correctly? I think I remember another line, which may
+      amend my meaning? 'Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these,
+      ye did it unto me.' Deist? Bless you, man, I was raised on the milk of the
+      Word. Now, Doctor, the pocket of the world having uttered its voice, what
+      has the heart to say? You are a philanthropist, in a small Way,&mdash;n'est
+      ce pas? Here, boy, this gentleman can show you how to cut korl better,&mdash;or
+      your destiny. Go on, May!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think a mocking devil possesses you to-night,&rdquo; rejoined the Doctor,
+      seriously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went to Wolfe and put his hand kindly on his arm. Something of a vague
+      idea possessed the Doctor's brain that much good was to be done here by a
+      friendly word or two: a latent genius to be warmed into life by a
+      waited-for sunbeam. Here it was: he had brought it. So he went on
+      complacently:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know, boy, you have it in you to be a great sculptor, a great man?
+      do you understand?&rdquo; (talking down to the capacity of his hearer: it is a
+      way people have with children, and men like Wolfe,)&mdash;&ldquo;to live a
+      better, stronger life than I, or Mr. Kirby here? A man may make himself
+      anything he chooses. God has given you stronger powers than many men,&mdash;me,
+      for instance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      May stopped, heated, glowing with his own magnanimity. And it was
+      magnanimous. The puddler had drunk in every word, looking through the
+      Doctor's flurry, and generous heat, and self-approval, into his will, with
+      those slow, absorbing eyes of his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Make yourself what you will. It is your right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; quietly. &ldquo;Will you help me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mitchell laughed again. The Doctor turned now, in a passion,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know, Mitchell, I have not the means. You know, if I had, it is in my
+      heart to take this boy and educate him for&rdquo;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The glory of God, and the glory of John May.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      May did not speak for a moment; then, controlled, he said,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should one be raised, when myriads are left?&mdash;I have not the
+      money, boy,&rdquo; to Wolfe, shortly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Money?&rdquo; He said it over slowly, as one repeats the guessed answer to a
+      riddle, doubtfully. &ldquo;That is it? Money?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, money,&mdash;that is it,&rdquo; said Mitchell, rising, and drawing his
+      furred coat about him. &ldquo;You've found the cure for all the world's
+      diseases.&mdash;Come, May, find your good-humor, and come home. This damp
+      wind chills my very bones. Come and preach your Saint-Simonian doctrines'
+      to-morrow to Kirby's hands. Let them have a clear idea of the rights of
+      the soul, and I'll venture next week they'll strike for higher wages. That
+      will be the end of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you send the coach-driver to this side of the mills?&rdquo; asked Kirby,
+      turning to Wolfe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke kindly: it was his habit to do so. Deborah, seeing the puddler
+      go, crept after him. The three men waited outside. Doctor May walked up
+      and down, chafed. Suddenly he stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go back, Mitchell! You say the pocket and the heart of the world speak
+      without meaning to these people. What has its head to say? Taste, culture,
+      refinement? Go!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mitchell was leaning against a brick wall. He turned his head indolently,
+      and looked into the mills. There hung about the place a thick, unclean
+      odor. The slightest motion of his hand marked that he perceived it, and
+      his insufferable disgust. That was all. May said nothing, only quickened
+      his angry tramp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Besides,&rdquo; added Mitchell, giving a corollary to his answer, &ldquo;it would be
+      of no use. I am not one of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do not mean&rdquo;&mdash;said May, facing him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I mean just that. Reform is born of need, not pity. No vital
+      movement of the people's has worked down, for good or evil; fermented,
+      instead, carried up the heaving, cloggy mass. Think back through history,
+      and you will know it. What will this lowest deep&mdash;thieves, Magdalens,
+      negroes&mdash;do with the light filtered through ponderous Church creeds,
+      Baconian theories, Goethe schemes? Some day, out of their bitter need will
+      be thrown up their own light-bringer,&mdash;their Jean Paul, their
+      Cromwell, their Messiah.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bah!&rdquo; was the Doctor's inward criticism. However, in practice, he adopted
+      the theory; for, when, night and morning, afterwards, he prayed that power
+      might be given these degraded souls to rise, he glowed at heart,
+      recognizing an accomplished duty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wolfe and the woman had stood in the shadow of the works as the coach
+      drove off. The Doctor had held out his hand in a frank, generous way,
+      telling him to &ldquo;take care of himself, and to remember it was his right to
+      rise.&rdquo; Mitchell had simply touched his hat, as to an equal, with a quiet
+      look of thorough recognition. Kirby had thrown Deborah some money, which
+      she found, and clutched eagerly enough. They were gone now, all of them.
+      The man sat down on the cinder-road, looking up into the murky sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'T be late, Hugh. Wunnot hur come?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He shook his head doggedly, and the woman crouched out of his sight
+      against the wall. Do you remember rare moments when a sudden light flashed
+      over yourself, your world, God? when you stood on a mountain-peak, seeing
+      your life as it might have been, as it is? one quick instant, when custom
+      lost its force and every-day usage? when your friend, wife, brother, stood
+      in a new light? your soul was bared, and the grave,&mdash;a foretaste of
+      the nakedness of the Judgment-Day? So it came before him, his life, that
+      night. The slow tides of pain he had borne gathered themselves up and
+      surged against his soul. His squalid daily life, the brutal coarseness
+      eating into his brain, as the ashes into his skin: before, these things
+      had been a dull aching into his consciousness; to-night, they were
+      reality. He griped the filthy red shirt that clung, stiff with soot, about
+      him, and tore it savagely from his arm. The flesh beneath was muddy with
+      grease and ashes,&mdash;and the heart beneath that! And the soul? God
+      knows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then flashed before his vivid poetic sense the man who had left him,&mdash;the
+      pure face, the delicate, sinewy limbs, in harmony with all he knew of
+      beauty or truth. In his cloudy fancy he had pictured a Something like
+      this. He had found it in this Mitchell, even when he idly scoffed at his
+      pain: a Man all-knowing, all-seeing, crowned by Nature, reigning,&mdash;the
+      keen glance of his eye falling like a sceptre on other men. And yet his
+      instinct taught him that he too&mdash;He! He looked at himself with sudden
+      loathing, sick, wrung his hands With a cry, and then was silent. With all
+      the phantoms of his heated, ignorant fancy, Wolfe had not been vague in
+      his ambitions. They were practical, slowly built up before him out of his
+      knowledge of what he could do. Through years he had day by day made this
+      hope a real thing to himself,&mdash;a clear, projected figure of himself,
+      as he might become.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Able to speak, to know what was best, to raise these men and women working
+      at his side up with him: sometimes he forgot this defined hope in the
+      frantic anguish to escape, only to escape,&mdash;out of the wet, the pain,
+      the ashes, somewhere, anywhere,&mdash;only for one moment of free air on a
+      hill-side, to lie down and let his sick soul throb itself out in the
+      sunshine. But to-night he panted for life. The savage strength of his
+      nature was roused; his cry was fierce to God for justice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look at me!&rdquo; he said to Deborah, with a low, bitter laugh, striking his
+      puny chest savagely. &ldquo;What am I worth, Deb? Is it my fault that I am no
+      better? My fault? My fault?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped, stung with a sudden remorse, seeing her hunchback shape
+      writhing with sobs. For Deborah was crying thankless tears, according to
+      the fashion of women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God forgi' me, woman! Things go harder Wi' you nor me. It's a worse
+      share.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He got up and helped her to rise; and they went doggedly down the muddy
+      street, side by side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's all wrong,&rdquo; he muttered, slowly,&mdash;&ldquo;all wrong! I dunnot
+      understan'. But it'll end some day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come home, Hugh!&rdquo; she said, coaxingly; for he had stopped, looking around
+      bewildered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Home,&mdash;and back to the mill!&rdquo; He went on saying this over to
+      himself, as if he would mutter down every pain in this dull despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She followed him through the fog, her blue lips chattering with cold. They
+      reached the cellar at last. Old Wolfe had been drinking since she went
+      out, and had crept nearer the door. The girl Janey slept heavily in the
+      corner. He went up to her, touching softly the worn white arm with his
+      fingers. Some bitterer thought stung him, as he stood there. He wiped the
+      drops from his forehead, and went into the room beyond, livid, trembling.
+      A hope, trifling, perhaps, but very dear, had died just then out of the
+      poor puddler's life, as he looked at the sleeping, innocent girl,&mdash;some
+      plan for the future, in which she had borne a part. He gave it up that
+      moment, then and forever. Only a trifle, perhaps, to us: his face grew a
+      shade paler,&mdash;that was all. But, somehow, the man's soul, as God and
+      the angels looked down on it, never was the same afterwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deborah followed him into the inner room. She carried a candle, which she
+      placed on the floor, closing the door after her. She had seen the look on
+      his face, as he turned away: her own grew deadly. Yet, as she came up to
+      him, her eyes glowed. He was seated on an old chest, quiet, holding his
+      face in his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hugh!&rdquo; she said, softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hugh, did hur hear what the man said,&mdash;him with the clear voice? Did
+      hur hear? Money, money,&mdash;that it wud do all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He pushed her away,&mdash;gently, but he was worn out; her rasping tone
+      fretted him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hugh!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The candle flared a pale yellow light over the cobwebbed brick walls, and
+      the woman standing there. He looked at her. She was young, in deadly
+      earnest; her faded eyes, and wet, ragged figure caught from their frantic
+      eagerness a power akin to beauty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hugh, it is true! Money ull do it! Oh, Hugh, boy, listen till me! He said
+      it true! It is money!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know. Go back! I do not want you here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hugh, it is t' last time. I'll never worrit hur again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There were tears in her voice now, but she choked them back:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hear till me only to-night! If one of t' witch people wud come, them we
+      heard oft' home, and gif hur all hur wants, what then? Say, Hugh!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her whisper shrilled through his brain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If one oft' witch dwarfs wud come from t' lane moors to-night, and gif
+      hur money, to go out,&mdash;OUT, I say,&mdash;out, lad, where t' sun
+      shines, and t' heath grows, and t' ladies walk in silken gownds, and God
+      stays all t' time,&mdash;where t'man lives that talked to us to-night,
+      Hugh knows,&mdash;Hugh could walk there like a king!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He thought the woman mad, tried to check her, but she went on, fierce in
+      her eager haste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I were t' witch dwarf, if I had t' money, wud hur thank me? Wud hur
+      take me out o' this place wid hur and Janey? I wud not come into the gran'
+      house hur wud build, to vex hur wid t' hunch,&mdash;only at night, when t'
+      shadows were dark, stand far off to see hur.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mad? Yes! Are many of us mad in this way?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Deb! poor Deb!&rdquo; he said, soothingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is here,&rdquo; she said, suddenly, jerking into his hand a small roll. &ldquo;I
+      took it! I did it! Me, me!&mdash;not hur! I shall be hanged, I shall be
+      burnt in hell, if anybody knows I took it! Out of his pocket, as he leaned
+      against t' bricks. Hur knows?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She thrust it into his hand, and then, her errand done, began to gather
+      chips together to make a fire, choking down hysteric sobs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has it come to this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That was all he said. The Welsh Wolfe blood was honest. The roll was a
+      small green pocket-book containing one or two gold pieces, and a check for
+      an incredible amount, as it seemed to the poor puddler. He laid it down,
+      hiding his face again in his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hugh, don't be angry wud me! It's only poor Deb,&mdash;hur knows?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took the long skinny fingers kindly in his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Angry? God help me, no! Let me sleep. I am tired.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He threw himself heavily down on the wooden bench, stunned with pain and
+      weariness. She brought some old rags to cover him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was late on Sunday evening before he awoke. I tell God's truth, when I
+      say he had then no thought of keeping this money. Deborah had hid it in
+      his pocket. He found it there. She watched him eagerly, as he took it out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must gif it to him,&rdquo; he said, reading her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hur knows,&rdquo; she said with a bitter sigh of disappointment. &ldquo;But it is hur
+      right to keep it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His right! The word struck him. Doctor May had used the same. He washed
+      himself, and went out to find this man Mitchell. His right! Why did this
+      chance word cling to him so obstinately? Do you hear the fierce devils
+      whisper in his ear, as he went slowly down the darkening street?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The evening came on, slow and calm. He seated himself at the end of an
+      alley leading into one of the larger streets. His brain was clear
+      to-night, keen, intent, mastering. It would not start back, cowardly, from
+      any hellish temptation, but meet it face to face. Therefore the great
+      temptation of his life came to him veiled by no sophistry, but bold,
+      defiant, owning its own vile name, trusting to one bold blow for victory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not deceive himself. Theft! That was it. At first the word sickened
+      him; then he grappled with it. Sitting there on a broken cart-wheel, the
+      fading day, the noisy groups, the church-bells' tolling passed before him
+      like a panorama, while the sharp struggle went on within. This money! He
+      took it out, and looked at it. If he gave it back, what then? He was going
+      to be cool about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      People going by to church saw only a sickly mill-boy watching them quietly
+      at the alley's mouth. They did not know that he was mad, or they would not
+      have gone by so quietly: mad with hunger; stretching out his hands to the
+      world, that had given so much to them, for leave to live the life God
+      meant him to live. His soul within him was smothering to death; he wanted
+      so much, thought so much, and knew&mdash;nothing. There was nothing of
+      which he was certain, except the mill and things there. Of God and heaven
+      he had heard so little, that they were to him what fairy-land is to a
+      child: something real, but not here; very far off. His brain, greedy,
+      dwarfed, full of thwarted energy and unused powers, questioned these men
+      and women going by, coldly, bitterly, that night. Was it not his right to
+      live as they,&mdash;a pure life, a good, true-hearted life, full of beauty
+      and kind words? He only wanted to know how to use the strength within him.
+      His heart warmed, as he thought of it. He suffered himself to think of it
+      longer. If he took the money?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he saw himself as he might be, strong, helpful, kindly. The night
+      crept on, as this one image slowly evolved itself from the crowd of other
+      thoughts and stood triumphant. He looked at it. As he might be! What
+      wonder, if it blinded him to delirium,&mdash;the madness that underlies
+      all revolution, all progress, and all fall?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You laugh at the shallow temptation? You see the error underlying its
+      argument so clearly,&mdash;that to him a true life was one of full
+      development rather than self-restraint? that he was deaf to the higher
+      tone in a cry of voluntary suffering for truth's sake than in the fullest
+      flow of spontaneous harmony? I do not plead his cause. I only want to show
+      you the mote in my brother's eye: then you can see clearly to take it out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The money,&mdash;there it lay on his knee, a little blotted slip of paper,
+      nothing in itself; used to raise him out of the pit, something straight
+      from God's hand. A thief! Well, what was it to be a thief? He met the
+      question at last, face to face, wiping the clammy drops of sweat from his
+      forehead. God made this money&mdash;the fresh air, too&mdash;for his
+      children's use. He never made the difference between poor and rich. The
+      Something who looked down on him that moment through the cool gray sky had
+      a kindly face, he knew,&mdash;loved his children alike. Oh, he knew that!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were times when the soft floods of color in the crimson and purple
+      flames, or the clear depth of amber in the water below the bridge, had
+      somehow given him a glimpse of another world than this,&mdash;of an
+      infinite depth of beauty and of quiet somewhere,&mdash;somewhere, a depth
+      of quiet and rest and love. Looking up now, it became strangely real. The
+      sun had sunk quite below the hills, but his last rays struck upward,
+      touching the zenith. The fog had risen, and the town and river were
+      steeped in its thick, gray damp; but overhead, the sun-touched
+      smoke-clouds opened like a cleft ocean,&mdash;shifting, rolling seas of
+      crimson mist, waves of billowy silver veined with blood-scarlet, inner
+      depths unfathomable of glancing light. Wolfe's artist-eye grew drunk with
+      color. The gates of that other world! Fading, flashing before him now!
+      What, in that world of Beauty, Content, and Right, were the petty laws,
+      the mine and thine, of mill-owners and mill hands?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A consciousness of power stirred within him. He stood up. A man,&mdash;he
+      thought, stretching out his hands,&mdash;free to work, to live, to love!
+      Free! His right! He folded the scrap of paper in his hand. As his nervous
+      fingers took it in, limp and blotted, so his soul took in the mean
+      temptation, lapped it in fancied rights, in dreams of improved existences,
+      drifting and endless as the cloud-seas of color. Clutching it, as if the
+      tightness of his hold would strengthen his sense of possession, he went
+      aimlessly down the street. It was his watch at the mill. He need not go,
+      need never go again, thank God!&mdash;shaking off the thought with
+      unspeakable loathing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shall I go over the history of the hours of that night? how the man
+      wandered from one to another of his old haunts, with a half-consciousness
+      of bidding them farewell,&mdash;lanes and alleys and back-yards where the
+      mill-hands lodged,&mdash;noting, with a new eagerness, the filth and
+      drunkenness, the pig-pens, the ash-heaps covered with potato-skins, the
+      bloated, pimpled women at the doors, with a new disgust, a new sense of
+      sudden triumph, and, under all, a new, vague dread, unknown before,
+      smothered down, kept under, but still there? It left him but once during
+      the night, when, for the second time in his life, he entered a church. It
+      was a sombre Gothic pile, where the stained light lost itself in
+      far-retreating arches; built to meet the requirements and sympathies of a
+      far other class than Wolfe's. Yet it touched, moved him uncontrollably.
+      The distances, the shadows, the still, marble figures, the mass of silent
+      kneeling worshippers, the mysterious music, thrilled, lifted his soul with
+      a wonderful pain. Wolfe forgot himself, forgot the new life he was going
+      to live, the mean terror gnawing underneath. The voice of the speaker
+      strengthened the charm; it was clear, feeling, full, strong. An old man,
+      who had lived much, suffered much; whose brain was keenly alive, dominant;
+      whose heart was summer-warm with charity. He taught it to-night. He held
+      up Humanity in its grand total; showed the great world-cancer to his
+      people. Who could show it better? He was a Christian reformer; he had
+      studied the age thoroughly; his outlook at man had been free, world-wide,
+      over all time. His faith stood sublime upon the Rock of Ages; his fiery
+      zeal guided vast schemes by which the Gospel was to be preached to all
+      nations. How did he preach it to-night? In burning, light-laden words he
+      painted Jesus, the incarnate Life, Love, the universal Man: words that
+      became reality in the lives of these people,&mdash;that lived again in
+      beautiful words and actions, trifling, but heroic. Sin, as he defined it,
+      was a real foe to them; their trials, temptations, were his. His words
+      passed far over the furnace-tender's grasp, toned to suit another class of
+      culture; they sounded in his ears a very pleasant song in an unknown
+      tongue. He meant to cure this world-cancer with a steady eye that had
+      never glared with hunger, and a hand that neither poverty nor
+      strychnine-whiskey had taught to shake. In this morbid, distorted heart of
+      the Welsh puddler he had failed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eighteen centuries ago, the Master of this man tried reform in the streets
+      of a city as crowded and vile as this, and did not fail. His disciple,
+      showing Him to-night to cultured hearers, showing the clearness of the
+      God-power acting through Him, shrank back from one coarse fact; that in
+      birth and habit the man Christ was thrown up from the lowest of the
+      people: his flesh, their flesh; their blood, his blood; tempted like them,
+      to brutalize day by day; to lie, to steal: the actual slime and want of
+      their hourly life, and the wine-press he trod alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet, is there no meaning in this perpetually covered truth? If the son of
+      the carpenter had stood in the church that night, as he stood with the
+      fishermen and harlots by the sea of Galilee, before His Father and their
+      Father, despised and rejected of men, without a place to lay His head,
+      wounded for their iniquities, bruised for their transgressions, would not
+      that hungry mill-boy at least, in the back seat, have &ldquo;known the man&rdquo;?
+      That Jesus did not stand there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wolfe rose at last, and turned from the church down the street. He looked
+      up; the night had come on foggy, damp; the golden mists had vanished, and
+      the sky lay dull and ash-colored. He wandered again aimlessly down the
+      street, idly wondering what had become of the cloud-sea of crimson and
+      scarlet. The trial-day of this man's life was over, and he had lost the
+      victory. What followed was mere drifting circumstance,&mdash;a quicker
+      walking over the path,&mdash;that was all. Do you want to hear the end of
+      it? You wish me to make a tragic story out of it? Why, in the
+      police-reports of the morning paper you can find a dozen such tragedies:
+      hints of shipwrecks unlike any that ever befell on the high seas; hints
+      that here a power was lost to heaven,&mdash;that there a soul went down
+      where no tide can ebb or flow. Commonplace enough the hints are,&mdash;jocose
+      sometimes, done up in rhyme.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Doctor May a month after the night I have told you of, was reading to his
+      wife at breakfast from this fourth column of the morning-paper: an unusual
+      thing,&mdash;these police-reports not being, in general, choice reading
+      for ladies; but it was only one item he read.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my dear! You remember that man I told you of, that we saw at Kirby's
+      mill?&mdash;that was arrested for robbing Mitchell? Here he is; just
+      listen:&mdash;'Circuit Court. Judge Day. Hugh Wolfe, operative in Kirby
+      &amp; John's Loudon Mills. Charge, grand larceny. Sentence, nineteen years
+      hard labor in penitentiary. Scoundrel! Serves him right! After all our
+      kindness that night! Picking Mitchell's pocket at the very time!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His wife said something about the ingratitude of that kind of people, and
+      then they began to talk of something else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nineteen years! How easy that was to read! What a simple word for Judge
+      Day to utter! Nineteen years! Half a lifetime!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh Wolfe sat on the window-ledge of his cell, looking out. His ankles
+      Were ironed. Not usual in such cases; but he had made two desperate
+      efforts to escape. &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; as Haley, the jailer, said, &ldquo;small blame to
+      him! Nineteen years' imprisonment was not a pleasant thing to look forward
+      to.&rdquo; Haley was very good-natured about it, though Wolfe had fought him
+      savagely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When he was first caught,&rdquo; the jailer said afterwards, in telling the
+      story, &ldquo;before the trial, the fellow was cut down at once,&mdash;laid
+      there on that pallet like a dead man, with his hands over his eyes. Never
+      saw a man so cut down in my life. Time of the trial, too, came the
+      queerest dodge of any customer I ever had. Would choose no lawyer. Judge
+      gave him one, of course. Gibson it Was. He tried to prove the fellow
+      crazy; but it wouldn't go. Thing was plain as daylight: money found on
+      him. 'T was a hard sentence,&mdash;all the law allows; but it was for
+      'xample's sake. These mill-hands are gettin' onbearable. When the sentence
+      was read, he just looked up, and said the money was his by rights, and
+      that all the world had gone wrong. That night, after the trial, a
+      gentleman came to see him here, name of Mitchell,&mdash;him as he stole
+      from. Talked to him for an hour. Thought he came for curiosity, like.
+      After he was gone, thought Wolfe was remarkable quiet, and went into his
+      cell. Found him very low; bed all bloody. Doctor said he had been bleeding
+      at the lungs. He was as weak as a cat; yet if ye'll b'lieve me, he tried
+      to get a-past me and get out. I just carried him like a baby, and threw
+      him on the pallet. Three days after, he tried it again: that time reached
+      the wall. Lord help you! he fought like a tiger,&mdash;giv' some terrible
+      blows. Fightin' for life, you see; for he can't live long, shut up in the
+      stone crib down yonder. Got a death-cough now. 'T took two of us to bring
+      him down that day; so I just put the irons on his feet. There he sits, in
+      there. Goin' to-morrow, with a batch more of 'em. That woman, hunchback,
+      tried with him,&mdash;you remember?&mdash;she's only got three years.
+      'Complice. But she's a woman, you know. He's been quiet ever since I put
+      on irons: giv' up, I suppose. Looks white, sick-lookin'. It acts different
+      on 'em, bein' sentenced. Most of 'em gets reckless, devilish-like. Some
+      prays awful, and sings them vile songs of the mills, all in a breath. That
+      woman, now, she's desper't'. Been beggin' to see Hugh, as she calls him,
+      for three days. I'm a-goin' to let her in. She don't go with him. Here she
+      is in this next cell. I'm a-goin' now to let her in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He let her in. Wolfe did not see her. She crept into a corner of the cell,
+      and stood watching him. He was scratching the iron bars of the window with
+      a piece of tin which he had picked up, with an idle, uncertain, vacant
+      stare, just as a child or idiot would do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tryin' to get out, old boy?&rdquo; laughed Haley. &ldquo;Them irons will need a
+      crow-bar beside your tin, before you can open 'em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wolfe laughed, too, in a senseless way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I'll get out,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe his brain's touched,&rdquo; said Haley, when he came out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The puddler scraped away with the tin for half an hour. Still Deborah did
+      not speak. At last she ventured nearer, and touched his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Blood?&rdquo; she said, looking at some spots on his coat with a shudder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked up at her, &ldquo;Why, Deb!&rdquo; he said, smiling,&mdash;such a bright,
+      boyish smile, that it Went to poor Deborah's heart directly, and she
+      sobbed and cried out loud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Hugh, lad! Hugh! dunnot look at me, when it wur my fault! To think I
+      brought hur to it! And I loved hur so! Oh lad, I dud!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The confession, even In this wretch, came with the woman's blush through
+      the sharp cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not seem to hear her,&mdash;scraping away diligently at the bars
+      with the bit of tin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Was he going mad? She peered closely into his face. Something she saw
+      there made her draw suddenly back,&mdash;something which Haley had not
+      seen, that lay beneath the pinched, vacant look it had caught since the
+      trial, or the curious gray shadow that rested on it. That gray shadow,&mdash;yes,
+      she knew what that meant. She had often seen it creeping over women's
+      faces for months, who died at last of slow hunger or consumption. That
+      meant death, distant, lingering: but this&mdash;Whatever it was the woman
+      saw, or thought she saw, used as she was to crime and misery, seemed to
+      make her sick with a new horror. Forgetting her fear of him, she caught
+      his shoulders, and looked keenly, steadily, into his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hugh!&rdquo; she cried, in a desperate whisper,&mdash;&ldquo;oh, boy, not that! for
+      God's sake, not that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The vacant laugh went off his face, and he answered her in a muttered word
+      or two that drove her away. Yet the words were kindly enough. Sitting
+      there on his pallet, she cried silently a hopeless sort of tears, but did
+      not speak again. The man looked up furtively at her now and then. Whatever
+      his own trouble was, her distress vexed him with a momentary sting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was market-day. The narrow window of the jail looked down directly on
+      the carts and wagons drawn up in a long line, where they had unloaded. He
+      could see, too, and hear distinctly the clink of money as it changed
+      hands, the busy crowd of whites and blacks shoving, pushing one another,
+      and the chaffering and swearing at the stalls. Somehow, the sound, more
+      than anything else had done, wakened him up,&mdash;made the whole real to
+      him. He was done with the world and the business of it. He let the tin
+      fall, and looked out, pressing his face close to the rusty bars. How they
+      crowded and pushed! And he,&mdash;he should never walk that pavement
+      again! There came Neff Sanders, one of the feeders at the mill, with a
+      basket on his arm. Sure enough, Nyeff was married the other week. He
+      whistled, hoping he would look up; but he did not. He wondered if Neff
+      remembered he was there,&mdash;if any of the boys thought of him up there,
+      and thought that he never was to go down that old cinder-road again. Never
+      again! He had not quite understood it before; but now he did. Not for days
+      or years, but never!&mdash;that was it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How clear the light fell on that stall in front of the market! and how
+      like a picture it was, the dark-green heaps of corn, and the crimson
+      beets, and golden melons! There was another with game: how the light
+      flickered on that pheasant's breast, with the purplish blood dripping over
+      the brown feathers! He could see the red shining of the drops, it was so
+      near. In one minute he could be down there. It was just a step. So easy,
+      as it seemed, so natural to go! Yet it could never be&mdash;not in all the
+      thousands of years to come&mdash;that he should put his foot on that
+      street again! He thought of himself with a sorrowful pity, as of some one
+      else. There was a dog down in the market, walking after his master with
+      such a stately, grave look!&mdash;only a dog, yet he could go backwards
+      and forwards just as he pleased: he had good luck! Why, the very vilest
+      cur, yelping there in the gutter, had not lived his life, had been free to
+      act out whatever thought God had put into his brain; while he&mdash;No, he
+      would not think of that! He tried to put the thought away, and to listen
+      to a dispute between a countryman and a woman about some meat; but it
+      would come back. He, what had he done to bear this?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then came the sudden picture of what might have been, and now. He knew
+      what it was to be in the penitentiary, how it went with men there. He knew
+      how in these long years he should slowly die, but not until soul and body
+      had become corrupt and rotten,&mdash;how, when he came out, if he lived to
+      come, even the lowest of the mill-hands would jeer him,&mdash;how his
+      hands would be weak, and his brain senseless and stupid. He believed he
+      was almost that now. He put his hand to his head, with a puzzled, weary
+      look. It ached, his head, with thinking. He tried to quiet himself. It was
+      only right, perhaps; he had done wrong. But was there right or wrong for
+      such as he? What was right? And who had ever taught him? He thrust the
+      whole matter away. A dark, cold quiet crept through his brain. It was all
+      wrong; but let it be! It was nothing to him more than the others. Let it
+      be!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door grated, as Haley opened it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, my woman! Must lock up for t' night. Come, stir yerself!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She went up and took Hugh's hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-night, Deb,&rdquo; he said, carelessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had not hoped he would say more; but the tired pain on her mouth just
+      then was bitterer than death. She took his passive hand and kissed it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hur'll never see Deb again!&rdquo; she ventured, her lips growing colder and
+      more bloodless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What did she say that for? Did he not know it? Yet he would not be
+      impatient with poor old Deb. She had trouble of her own, as well as he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, never again,&rdquo; he said, trying to be cheerful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood just a moment, looking at him. Do you laugh at her, standing
+      there, with her hunchback, her rags, her bleared, withered face, and the
+      great despised love tugging at her heart?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, you!&rdquo; called Haley, impatiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not move.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hugh!&rdquo; she whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was to be her last word. What was it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hugh, boy, not THAT!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not answer. She wrung her hands, trying to be silent, looking in
+      his face in an agony of entreaty. He smiled again, kindly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is best, Deb. I cannot bear to be hurted any more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hur knows,&rdquo; she said, humbly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell my father good-bye; and&mdash;and kiss little Janey.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She nodded, saying nothing, looked in his face again, and went out of the
+      door. As she went, she staggered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Drinkin' to-day?&rdquo; broke out Haley, pushing her before him. &ldquo;Where the
+      Devil did you get it? Here, in with ye!&rdquo; and he shoved her into her cell,
+      next to Wolfe's, and shut the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Along the wall of her cell there was a crack low down by the floor,
+      through which she could see the light from Wolfe's. She had discovered it
+      days before. She hurried in now, and, kneeling down by it, listened,
+      hoping to hear some sound. Nothing but the rasping of the tin on the bars.
+      He was at his old amusement again. Something in the noise jarred on her
+      ear, for she shivered as she heard it. Hugh rasped away at the bars. A
+      dull old bit of tin, not fit to cut korl with.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked out of the window again. People were leaving the market now. A
+      tall mulatto girl, following her mistress, her basket on her head, crossed
+      the street just below, and looked up. She was laughing; but, when she
+      caught sight of the haggard face peering out through the bars, suddenly
+      grew grave, and hurried by. A free, firm step, a clear-cut olive face,
+      with a scarlet turban tied on one side, dark, shining eyes, and on the
+      head the basket poised, filled with fruit and flowers, under which the
+      scarlet turban and bright eyes looked out half-shadowed. The picture
+      caught his eye. It was good to see a face like that. He would try
+      to-morrow, and cut one like it. To-morrow! He threw down the tin,
+      trembling, and covered his face with his hands. When he looked up again,
+      the daylight was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deborah, crouching near by on the other side of the wall, heard no noise.
+      He sat on the side of the low pallet, thinking. Whatever was the mystery
+      which the woman had seen on his face, it came out now slowly, in the dark
+      there, and became fixed,&mdash;a something never seen on his face before.
+      The evening was darkening fast. The market had been over for an hour; the
+      rumbling of the carts over the pavement grew more infrequent: he listened
+      to each, as it passed, because he thought it was to be for the last time.
+      For the same reason, it was, I suppose, that he strained his eyes to catch
+      a glimpse of each passer-by, wondering who they were, what kind of homes
+      they were going to, if they had children,&mdash;listening eagerly to every
+      chance word in the street, as if&mdash;(God be merciful to the man! what
+      strange fancy was this?)&mdash;as if he never should hear human voices
+      again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was quite dark at last. The street was a lonely one. The last
+      passenger, he thought, was gone. No,&mdash;there was a quick step: Joe
+      Hill, lighting the lamps. Joe was a good old chap; never passed a fellow
+      without some joke or other. He remembered once seeing the place where he
+      lived with his wife. &ldquo;Granny Hill&rdquo; the boys called her. Bedridden she Was;
+      but so kind as Joe was to her! kept the room so clean!&mdash;and the old
+      woman, when he was there, was laughing at some of &ldquo;t' lad's foolishness.&rdquo;
+       The step was far down the street; but he could see him place the ladder,
+      run up, and light the gas. A longing seized him to be spoken to once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Joe!&rdquo; he called, out of the grating. &ldquo;Good-bye, Joe!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man stopped a moment, listening uncertainly; then hurried on. The
+      prisoner thrust his hand out of the window, and called again, louder; but
+      Joe was too far down the street. It was a little thing; but it hurt him,&mdash;this
+      disappointment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye, Joe!&rdquo; he called, sorrowfully enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be quiet!&rdquo; said one of the jailers, passing the door, striking on it with
+      his club.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh, that was the last, was it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an inexpressible bitterness on his face, as he lay down on the
+      bed, taking the bit of tin, which he had rasped to a tolerable degree of
+      sharpness, in his hand,&mdash;to play with, it may be. He bared his arms,
+      looking intently at their corded veins and sinews. Deborah, listening in
+      the next cell, heard a slight clicking sound, often repeated. She shut her
+      lips tightly, that she might not scream; the cold drops of sweat broke
+      over her, in her dumb agony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hur knows best,&rdquo; she muttered at last, fiercely clutching the boards
+      where she lay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If she could have seen Wolfe, there was nothing about him to frighten her.
+      He lay quite still, his arms outstretched, looking at the pearly stream of
+      moonlight coming into the window. I think in that one hour that came then
+      he lived back over all the years that had gone before. I think that all
+      the low, vile life, all his wrongs, all his starved hopes, came then, and
+      stung him with a farewell poison that made him sick unto death. He made
+      neither moan nor cry, only turned his worn face now and then to the pure
+      light, that seemed so far off, as one that said, &ldquo;How long, O Lord? how
+      long?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The hour was over at last. The moon, passing over her nightly path, slowly
+      came nearer, and threw the light across his bed on his feet. He watched it
+      steadily, as it crept up, inch by inch, slowly. It seemed to him to carry
+      with it a great silence. He had been so hot and tired there always in the
+      mills! The years had been so fierce and cruel! There was coming now quiet
+      and coolness and sleep. His tense limbs relaxed, and settled in a calm
+      languor. The blood ran fainter and slow from his heart. He did not think
+      now with a savage anger of what might be and was not; he was conscious
+      only of deep stillness creeping over him. At first he saw a sea of faces:
+      the mill-men,&mdash;women he had known, drunken and bloated,&mdash;Janey's
+      timid and pitiful-poor old Debs: then they floated together like a mist,
+      and faded away, leaving only the clear, pearly moonlight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whether, as the pure light crept up the stretched-out figure, it brought
+      with It calm and peace, who shall say? His dumb soul was alone with God in
+      judgment. A Voice may have spoken for it from far-off Calvary, &ldquo;Father,
+      forgive them, for they know not what they do!&rdquo; Who dare say? Fainter and
+      fainter the heart rose and fell, slower and slower the moon floated from
+      behind a cloud, until, when at last its full tide of white splendor swept
+      over the cell, it seemed to wrap and fold into a deeper stillness the dead
+      figure that never should move again. Silence deeper than the Night!
+      Nothing that moved, save the black, nauseous stream of blood dripping
+      slowly from the pallet to the floor!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was outcry and crowd enough in the cell the next day. The coroner
+      and his jury, the local editors, Kirby himself, and boys with their hands
+      thrust knowingly into their pockets and heads on one side, jammed into the
+      corners. Coming and going all day. Only one woman. She came late, and
+      outstayed them all. A Quaker, or Friend, as they call themselves. I think
+      this woman Was known by that name in heaven. A homely body, coarsely
+      dressed in gray and white. Deborah (for Haley had let her in) took notice
+      of her. She watched them all&mdash;sitting on the end of the pallet,
+      holding his head in her arms with the ferocity of a watch-dog, if any of
+      them touched the body. There was no meekness, no sorrow, in her face; the
+      stuff out of which murderers are made, instead. All the time Haley and the
+      woman were laying straight the limbs and cleaning the cell, Deborah sat
+      still, keenly watching the Quaker's face. Of all the crowd there that day,
+      this woman alone had not spoken to her,&mdash;only once or twice had put
+      some cordial to her lips. After they all were gone, the woman, in the same
+      still, gentle way, brought a vase of wood-leaves and berries, and placed
+      it by the pallet, then opened the narrow window. The fresh air blew in,
+      and swept the woody fragrance over the dead face, Deborah looked up with a
+      quick wonder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did hur know my boy wud like it? Did hur know Hugh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know Hugh now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The white fingers passed in a slow, pitiful way over the dead, worn face.
+      There was a heavy shadow in the quiet eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did hur know where they'll bury Hugh?&rdquo; said Deborah in a shrill tone,
+      catching her arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This had been the question hanging on her lips all day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In t' town-yard? Under t' mud and ash? T' lad'll smother, woman! He wur
+      born in t' lane moor, where t' air is frick and strong. Take hur out, for
+      God's sake, take hur out where t' air blows!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Quaker hesitated, but only for a moment. She put her strong arm around
+      Deborah and led her to the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thee sees the hills, friend, over the river? Thee sees how the light lies
+      warm there, and the winds of God blow all the day? I live there,&mdash;where
+      the blue smoke is, by the trees. Look at me,&rdquo; She turned Deborah's face to
+      her own, clear and earnest, &ldquo;Thee will believe me? I will take Hugh and
+      bury him there to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deborah did not doubt her. As the evening wore on, she leaned against the
+      iron bars, looking at the hills that rose far off, through the thick
+      sodden clouds, like a bright, unattainable calm. As she looked, a shadow
+      of their solemn repose fell on her face; its fierce discontent faded into
+      a pitiful, humble quiet. Slow, solemn tears gathered in her eyes: the poor
+      weak eyes turned so hopelessly to the place where Hugh was to rest, the
+      grave heights looking higher and brighter and more solemn than ever
+      before. The Quaker watched her keenly. She came to her at last, and
+      touched her arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When thee comes back,&rdquo; she said, in a low, sorrowful tone, like one who
+      speaks from a strong heart deeply moved with remorse or pity, &ldquo;thee shall
+      begin thy life again,&mdash;there on the hills. I came too late; but not
+      for thee,&mdash;by God's help, it may be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Not too late. Three years after, the Quaker began her work. I end my story
+      here. At evening-time it was light. There is no need to tire you with the
+      long years of sunshine, and fresh air, and slow, patient Christ-love,
+      needed to make healthy and hopeful this impure body and soul. There is a
+      homely pine house, on one of these hills, whose windows overlook broad,
+      wooded slopes and clover-crimsoned meadows,&mdash;niched into the very
+      place where the light is warmest, the air freest. It is the Friends'
+      meeting-house. Once a week they sit there, in their grave, earnest way,
+      waiting for the Spirit of Love to speak, opening their simple hearts to
+      receive His words. There is a woman, old, deformed, who takes a humble
+      place among them: waiting like them: in her gray dress, her worn face,
+      pure and meek, turned now and then to the sky. A woman much loved by these
+      silent, restful people; more silent than they, more humble, more loving.
+      Waiting: with her eyes turned to hills higher and purer than these on
+      which she lives, dim and far off now, but to be reached some day. There
+      may be in her heart some latent hope to meet there the love denied her
+      here,&mdash;that she shall find him whom she lost, and that then she will
+      not be all-unworthy. Who blames her? Something is lost in the passage of
+      every soul from one eternity to the other,&mdash;something pure and
+      beautiful, which might have been and was not: a hope, a talent, a love,
+      over which the soul mourns, like Esau deprived of his birthright. What
+      blame to the meek Quaker, if she took her lost hope to make the hills of
+      heaven more fair?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing remains to tell that the poor Welsh puddler once lived, but this
+      figure of the mill-woman cut in korl. I have it here in a corner of my
+      library. I keep it hid behind a curtain,&mdash;it is such a rough,
+      ungainly thing. Yet there are about it touches, grand sweeps of outline,
+      that show a master's hand. Sometimes,&mdash;to-night, for instance,&mdash;the
+      curtain is accidentally drawn back, and I see a bare arm stretched out
+      imploringly in the darkness, and an eager, wolfish face watching mine: a
+      wan, woful face, through which the spirit of the dead korl-cutter looks
+      out, with its thwarted life, its mighty hunger, its unfinished work. Its
+      pale, vague lips seem to tremble with a terrible question. &ldquo;Is this the
+      End?&rdquo; they say,&mdash;&ldquo;nothing beyond? no more?&rdquo; Why, you tell me you have
+      seen that look in the eyes of dumb brutes,&mdash;horses dying under the
+      lash. I know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The deep of the night is passing while I write. The gas-light wakens from
+      the shadows here and there the objects which lie scattered through the
+      room: only faintly, though; for they belong to the open sunlight. As I
+      glance at them, they each recall some task or pleasure of the coming day.
+      A half-moulded child's head; Aphrodite; a bough of forest-leaves; music;
+      work; homely fragments, in which lie the secrets of all eternal truth and
+      beauty. Prophetic all! Only this dumb, woful face seems to belong to and
+      end with the night. I turn to look at it. Has the power of its desperate
+      need commanded the darkness away? While the room is yet steeped in heavy
+      shadow, a cool, gray light suddenly touches its head like a blessing hand,
+      and its groping arm points through the broken cloud to the far East,
+      where, in the flickering, nebulous crimson, God has set the promise of the
+      Dawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
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+</html>
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+Project Gutenberg's Life in the Iron-Mills, by Rebecca Harding Davis
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Life in the Iron-Mills
+
+Author: Rebecca Harding Davis
+
+Posting Date: July 27, 2008 [EBook #876]
+Release Date: April 1997
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE IN THE IRON-MILLS ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+LIFE IN THE IRON-MILLS
+
+by Rebecca Harding Davis
+
+
+               "Is this the end?
+               O Life, as futile, then, as frail!
+               What hope of answer or redress?"
+
+
+A cloudy day: do you know what that is in a town of iron-works? The sky
+sank down before dawn, muddy, flat, immovable. The air is thick, clammy
+with the breath of crowded human beings. It stifles me. I open the
+window, and, looking out, can scarcely see through the rain the grocer's
+shop opposite, where a crowd of drunken Irishmen are puffing Lynchburg
+tobacco in their pipes. I can detect the scent through all the foul
+smells ranging loose in the air.
+
+The idiosyncrasy of this town is smoke. It rolls sullenly in slow folds
+from the great chimneys of the iron-foundries, and settles down in
+black, slimy pools on the muddy streets. Smoke on the wharves, smoke on
+the dingy boats, on the yellow river,--clinging in a coating of greasy
+soot to the house-front, the two faded poplars, the faces of the
+passers-by. The long train of mules, dragging masses of pig-iron through
+the narrow street, have a foul vapor hanging to their reeking sides.
+Here, inside, is a little broken figure of an angel pointing upward from
+the mantel-shelf; but even its wings are covered with smoke, clotted
+and black. Smoke everywhere! A dirty canary chirps desolately in a
+cage beside me. Its dream of green fields and sunshine is a very old
+dream,--almost worn out, I think.
+
+From the back-window I can see a narrow brick-yard sloping down to
+the river-side, strewed with rain-butts and tubs. The river, dull and
+tawny-colored, (la belle riviere!) drags itself sluggishly along, tired
+of the heavy weight of boats and coal-barges. What wonder? When I was a
+child, I used to fancy a look of weary, dumb appeal upon the face of the
+negro-like river slavishly bearing its burden day after day. Something
+of the same idle notion comes to me to-day, when from the street-window
+I look on the slow stream of human life creeping past, night and
+morning, to the great mills. Masses of men, with dull, besotted faces
+bent to the ground, sharpened here and there by pain or cunning; skin
+and muscle and flesh begrimed with smoke and ashes; stooping all night
+over boiling caldrons of metal, laired by day in dens of drunkenness and
+infamy; breathing from infancy to death an air saturated with fog and
+grease and soot, vileness for soul and body. What do you make of a case
+like that, amateur psychologist? You call it an altogether serious thing
+to be alive: to these men it is a drunken jest, a joke,--horrible to
+angels perhaps, to them commonplace enough. My fancy about the river was
+an idle one: it is no type of such a life. What if it be stagnant and
+slimy here? It knows that beyond there waits for it odorous sunlight,
+quaint old gardens, dusky with soft, green foliage of apple-trees, and
+flushing crimson with roses,--air, and fields, and mountains. The future
+of the Welsh puddler passing just now is not so pleasant. To be stowed
+away, after his grimy work is done, in a hole in the muddy graveyard,
+and after that, not air, nor green fields, nor curious roses.
+
+Can you see how foggy the day is? As I stand here, idly tapping the
+windowpane, and looking out through the rain at the dirty back-yard and
+the coalboats below, fragments of an old story float up before me,--a
+story of this house into which I happened to come to-day. You may think
+it a tiresome story enough, as foggy as the day, sharpened by no sudden
+flashes of pain or pleasure.--I know: only the outline of a dull life,
+that long since, with thousands of dull lives like its own, was vainly
+lived and lost: thousands of them, massed, vile, slimy lives, like those
+of the torpid lizards in yonder stagnant water-butt.--Lost? There is a
+curious point for you to settle, my friend, who study psychology in a
+lazy, dilettante way. Stop a moment. I am going to be honest. This is
+what I want you to do. I want you to hide your disgust, take no heed
+to your clean clothes, and come right down with me,--here, into the
+thickest of the fog and mud and foul effluvia. I want you to hear this
+story. There is a secret down here, in this nightmare fog, that has lain
+dumb for centuries: I want to make it a real thing to you. You, Egoist,
+or Pantheist, or Arminian, busy in making straight paths for your feet
+on the hills, do not see it clearly,--this terrible question which men
+here have gone mad and died trying to answer. I dare not put this secret
+into words. I told you it was dumb. These men, going by with drunken
+faces and brains full of unawakened power, do not ask it of Society or
+of God. Their lives ask it; their deaths ask it. There is no reply. I
+will tell you plainly that I have a great hope; and I bring it to you
+to be tested. It is this: that this terrible dumb question is its own
+reply; that it is not the sentence of death we think it, but, from the
+very extremity of its darkness, the most solemn prophecy which the world
+has known of the Hope to come. I dare make my meaning no clearer, but
+will only tell my story. It will, perhaps, seem to you as foul and dark
+as this thick vapor about us, and as pregnant with death; but if your
+eyes are free as mine are to look deeper, no perfume-tinted dawn will be
+so fair with promise of the day that shall surely come.
+
+My story is very simple,--Only what I remember of the life of one
+of these men,--a furnace-tender in one of Kirby & John's
+rolling-mills,--Hugh Wolfe. You know the mills? They took the great
+order for the lower Virginia railroads there last winter; run usually
+with about a thousand men. I cannot tell why I choose the half-forgotten
+story of this Wolfe more than that of myriads of these furnace-hands.
+Perhaps because there is a secret, underlying sympathy between that
+story and this day with its impure fog and thwarted sunshine,--or
+perhaps simply for the reason that this house is the one where the
+Wolfes lived. There were the father and son,--both hands, as I said,
+in one of Kirby & John's mills for making railroad-iron,--and Deborah,
+their cousin, a picker in some of the cotton-mills. The house was rented
+then to half a dozen families. The Wolfes had two of the cellar-rooms.
+The old man, like many of the puddlers and feeders of the mills, was
+Welsh,--had spent half of his life in the Cornish tin-mines. You may
+pick the Welsh emigrants, Cornish miners, out of the throng passing the
+windows, any day. They are a trifle more filthy; their muscles are not
+so brawny; they stoop more. When they are drunk, they neither yell, nor
+shout, nor stagger, but skulk along like beaten hounds. A pure,
+unmixed blood, I fancy: shows itself in the slight angular bodies and
+sharply-cut facial lines. It is nearly thirty years since the Wolfes
+lived here. Their lives were like those of their class: incessant
+labor, sleeping in kennel-like rooms, eating rank pork and molasses,
+drinking--God and the distillers only know what; with an occasional
+night in jail, to atone for some drunken excess. Is that all of their
+lives?--of the portion given to them and these their duplicates swarming
+the streets to-day?--nothing beneath?--all? So many a political reformer
+will tell you,--and many a private reformer, too, who has gone among
+them with a heart tender with Christ's charity, and come out outraged,
+hardened.
+
+One rainy night, about eleven o'clock, a crowd of half-clothed women
+stopped outside of the cellar-door. They were going home from the
+cotton-mill.
+
+"Good-night, Deb," said one, a mulatto, steadying herself against the
+gas-post. She needed the post to steady her. So did more than one of
+them.
+
+"Dah's a ball to Miss Potts' to-night. Ye'd best come."
+
+"Inteet, Deb, if hur'll come, hur'll hef fun," said a shrill Welsh voice
+in the crowd.
+
+Two or three dirty hands were thrust out to catch the gown of the woman,
+who was groping for the latch of the door.
+
+"No."
+
+"No? Where's Kit Small, then?"
+
+"Begorra! on the spools. Alleys behint, though we helped her, we dud.
+An wid ye! Let Deb alone! It's ondacent frettin' a quite body. Be the
+powers, an we'll have a night of it! there'll be lashin's o' drink,--the
+Vargent be blessed and praised for't!"
+
+They went on, the mulatto inclining for a moment to show fight, and drag
+the woman Wolfe off with them; but, being pacified, she staggered away.
+
+Deborah groped her way into the cellar, and, after considerable
+stumbling, kindled a match, and lighted a tallow dip, that sent a yellow
+glimmer over the room. It was low, damp,--the earthen floor covered with
+a green, slimy moss,--a fetid air smothering the breath. Old Wolfe lay
+asleep on a heap of straw, wrapped in a torn horse-blanket. He was a
+pale, meek little man, with a white face and red rabbit-eyes. The woman
+Deborah was like him; only her face was even more ghastly, her lips
+bluer, her eyes more watery. She wore a faded cotton gown and a
+slouching bonnet. When she walked, one could see that she was deformed,
+almost a hunchback. She trod softly, so as not to waken him, and went
+through into the room beyond. There she found by the half-extinguished
+fire an iron saucepan filled with cold boiled potatoes, which she put
+upon a broken chair with a pint-cup of ale. Placing the old candlestick
+beside this dainty repast, she untied her bonnet, which hung limp and
+wet over her face, and prepared to eat her supper. It was the first
+food that had touched her lips since morning. There was enough of it,
+however: there is not always. She was hungry,--one could see that easily
+enough,--and not drunk, as most of her companions would have been
+found at this hour. She did not drink, this woman,--her face told that,
+too,--nothing stronger than ale. Perhaps the weak, flaccid wretch had
+some stimulant in her pale life to keep her up,--some love or hope, it
+might be, or urgent need. When that stimulant was gone, she would take
+to whiskey. Man cannot live by work alone. While she was skinning the
+potatoes, and munching them, a noise behind her made her stop.
+
+"Janey!" she called, lifting the candle and peering into the darkness.
+"Janey, are you there?"
+
+A heap of ragged coats was heaved up, and the face of a young girl
+emerged, staring sleepily at the woman.
+
+"Deborah," she said, at last, "I'm here the night."
+
+"Yes, child. Hur's welcome," she said, quietly eating on.
+
+The girl's face was haggard and sickly; her eyes were heavy with sleep
+and hunger: real Milesian eyes they were, dark, delicate blue, glooming
+out from black shadows with a pitiful fright.
+
+"I was alone," she said, timidly.
+
+"Where's the father?" asked Deborah, holding out a potato, which the
+girl greedily seized.
+
+"He's beyant,--wid Haley,--in the stone house." (Did you ever hear the
+word tail from an Irish mouth?) "I came here. Hugh told me never to stay
+me-lone."
+
+"Hugh?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+A vexed frown crossed her face. The girl saw it, and added quickly,--
+
+"I have not seen Hugh the day, Deb. The old man says his watch lasts
+till the mornin'."
+
+The woman sprang up, and hastily began to arrange some bread and flitch
+in a tin pail, and to pour her own measure of ale into a bottle. Tying
+on her bonnet, she blew out the candle.
+
+"Lay ye down, Janey dear," she said, gently, covering her with the old
+rags. "Hur can eat the potatoes, if hur's hungry.
+
+"Where are ye goin', Deb? The rain's sharp."
+
+"To the mill, with Hugh's supper."
+
+"Let him bide till th' morn. Sit ye down."
+
+"No, no,"--sharply pushing her off. "The boy'll starve."
+
+She hurried from the cellar, while the child wearily coiled herself up
+for sleep. The rain was falling heavily, as the woman, pail in hand,
+emerged from the mouth of the alley, and turned down the narrow street,
+that stretched out, long and black, miles before her. Here and there a
+flicker of gas lighted an uncertain space of muddy footwalk and gutter;
+the long rows of houses, except an occasional lager-bier shop, were
+closed; now and then she met a band of millhands skulking to or from
+their work.
+
+Not many even of the inhabitants of a manufacturing town know the vast
+machinery of system by which the bodies of workmen are governed, that
+goes on unceasingly from year to year. The hands of each mill are
+divided into watches that relieve each other as regularly as the
+sentinels of an army. By night and day the work goes on, the unsleeping
+engines groan and shriek, the fiery pools of metal boil and surge. Only
+for a day in the week, in half-courtesy to public censure, the fires are
+partially veiled; but as soon as the clock strikes midnight, the great
+furnaces break forth with renewed fury, the clamor begins with fresh,
+breathless vigor, the engines sob and shriek like "gods in pain."
+
+As Deborah hurried down through the heavy rain, the noise of these
+thousand engines sounded through the sleep and shadow of the city like
+far-off thunder. The mill to which she was going lay on the river, a
+mile below the city-limits. It was far, and she was weak, aching from
+standing twelve hours at the spools. Yet it was her almost nightly walk
+to take this man his supper, though at every square she sat down to
+rest, and she knew she should receive small word of thanks.
+
+Perhaps, if she had possessed an artist's eye, the picturesque oddity
+of the scene might have made her step stagger less, and the path seem
+shorter; but to her the mills were only "summat deilish to look at by
+night."
+
+The road leading to the mills had been quarried from the solid rock,
+which rose abrupt and bare on one side of the cinder-covered road, while
+the river, sluggish and black, crept past on the other. The mills for
+rolling iron are simply immense tent-like roofs, covering acres of
+ground, open on every side. Beneath these roofs Deborah looked in on a
+city of fires, that burned hot and fiercely in the night. Fire in every
+horrible form: pits of flame waving in the wind; liquid metal-flames
+writhing in tortuous streams through the sand; wide caldrons filled
+with boiling fire, over which bent ghastly wretches stirring the
+strange brewing; and through all, crowds of half-clad men, looking
+like revengeful ghosts in the red light, hurried, throwing masses of
+glittering fire. It was like a street in Hell. Even Deborah muttered, as
+she crept through, "looks like t' Devil's place!" It did,--in more ways
+than one.
+
+She found the man she was looking for, at last, heaping coal on a
+furnace. He had not time to eat his supper; so she went behind the
+furnace, and waited. Only a few men were with him, and they noticed her
+only by a "Hyur comes t'hunchback, Wolfe."
+
+Deborah was stupid with sleep; her back pained her sharply; and her
+teeth chattered with cold, with the rain that soaked her clothes and
+dripped from her at every step. She stood, however, patiently holding
+the pail, and waiting.
+
+"Hout, woman! ye look like a drowned cat. Come near to the fire,"--said
+one of the men, approaching to scrape away the ashes.
+
+She shook her head. Wolfe had forgotten her. He turned, hearing the man,
+and came closer.
+
+"I did no' think; gi' me my supper, woman."
+
+She watched him eat with a painful eagerness. With a woman's quick
+instinct, she saw that he was not hungry,--was eating to please her. Her
+pale, watery eyes began to gather a strange light.
+
+"Is't good, Hugh? T' ale was a bit sour, I feared."
+
+"No, good enough." He hesitated a moment. "Ye're tired, poor lass! Bide
+here till I go. Lay down there on that heap of ash, and go to sleep."
+
+He threw her an old coat for a pillow, and turned to his work. The
+heap was the refuse of the burnt iron, and was not a hard bed; the
+half-smothered warmth, too, penetrated her limbs, dulling their pain and
+cold shiver.
+
+Miserable enough she looked, lying there on the ashes like a limp,
+dirty rag,--yet not an unfitting figure to crown the scene of hopeless
+discomfort and veiled crime: more fitting, if one looked deeper into the
+heart of things, at her thwarted woman's form, her colorless life, her
+waking stupor that smothered pain and hunger,--even more fit to be a
+type of her class. Deeper yet if one could look, was there nothing worth
+reading in this wet, faded thing, halfcovered with ashes? no story of a
+soul filled with groping passionate love, heroic unselfishness, fierce
+jealousy? of years of weary trying to please the one human being whom
+she loved, to gain one look of real heart-kindness from him? If
+anything like this were hidden beneath the pale, bleared eyes, and dull,
+washed-out-looking face, no one had ever taken the trouble to read its
+faint signs: not the half-clothed furnace-tender, Wolfe, certainly. Yet
+he was kind to her: it was his nature to be kind, even to the very rats
+that swarmed in the cellar: kind to her in just the same way. She knew
+that. And it might be that very knowledge had given to her face its
+apathy and vacancy more than her low, torpid life. One sees that
+dead, vacant look steal sometimes over the rarest, finest of women's
+faces,--in the very midst, it may be, of their warmest summer's day; and
+then one can guess at the secret of intolerable solitude that lies hid
+beneath the delicate laces and brilliant smile. There was no warmth, no
+brilliancy, no summer for this woman; so the stupor and vacancy had time
+to gnaw into her face perpetually. She was young, too, though no one
+guessed it; so the gnawing was the fiercer.
+
+She lay quiet in the dark corner, listening, through the monotonous din
+and uncertain glare of the works, to the dull plash of the rain in the
+far distance, shrinking back whenever the man Wolfe happened to look
+towards her. She knew, in spite of all his kindness, that there was that
+in her face and form which made him loathe the sight of her. She felt by
+instinct, although she could not comprehend it, the finer nature of
+the man, which made him among his fellow-workmen something unique, set
+apart. She knew, that, down under all the vileness and coarseness of his
+life, there was a groping passion for whatever was beautiful and pure,
+that his soul sickened with disgust at her deformity, even when his
+words were kindest. Through this dull consciousness, which never left
+her, came, like a sting, the recollection of the dark blue eyes and
+lithe figure of the little Irish girl she had left in the cellar. The
+recollection struck through even her stupid intellect with a vivid glow
+of beauty and of grace. Little Janey, timid, helpless, clinging to Hugh
+as her only friend: that was the sharp thought, the bitter thought, that
+drove into the glazed eyes a fierce light of pain. You laugh at it? Are
+pain and jealousy less savage realities down here in this place I am
+taking you to than in your own house or your own heart,--your heart,
+which they clutch at sometimes? The note is the same, I fancy, be the
+octave high or low.
+
+If you could go into this mill where Deborah lay, and drag out from the
+hearts of these men the terrible tragedy of their lives, taking it as a
+symptom of the disease of their class, no ghost Horror would terrify
+you more. A reality of soul-starvation, of living death, that meets you
+every day under the besotted faces on the street,--I can paint nothing
+of this, only give you the outside outlines of a night, a crisis in the
+life of one man: whatever muddy depth of soul-history lies beneath you
+can read according to the eyes God has given you.
+
+Wolfe, while Deborah watched him as a spaniel its master, bent over the
+furnace with his iron pole, unconscious of her scrutiny, only stopping
+to receive orders. Physically, Nature had promised the man but little.
+He had already lost the strength and instinct vigor of a man, his
+muscles were thin, his nerves weak, his face ( a meek, woman's face)
+haggard, yellow with consumption. In the mill he was known as one of
+the girl-men: "Molly Wolfe" was his sobriquet. He was never seen in
+the cockpit, did not own a terrier, drank but seldom; when he did,
+desperately. He fought sometimes, but was always thrashed, pommelled to
+a jelly. The man was game enough, when his blood was up: but he was no
+favorite in the mill; he had the taint of school-learning on him,--not
+to a dangerous extent, only a quarter or so in the free-school in fact,
+but enough to ruin him as a good hand in a fight.
+
+For other reasons, too, he was not popular. Not one of themselves, they
+felt that, though outwardly as filthy and ash-covered; silent, with
+foreign thoughts and longings breaking out through his quietness in
+innumerable curious ways: this one, for instance. In the neighboring
+furnace-buildings lay great heaps of the refuse from the ore after the
+pig-metal is run. Korl we call it here: a light, porous substance, of
+a delicate, waxen, flesh-colored tinge. Out of the blocks of this korl,
+Wolfe, in his off-hours from the furnace, had a habit of chipping and
+moulding figures,--hideous, fantastic enough, but sometimes strangely
+beautiful: even the mill-men saw that, while they jeered at him. It was
+a curious fancy in the man, almost a passion. The few hours for rest he
+spent hewing and hacking with his blunt knife, never speaking, until his
+watch came again,--working at one figure for months, and, when it was
+finished, breaking it to pieces perhaps, in a fit of disappointment. A
+morbid, gloomy man, untaught, unled, left to feed his soul in grossness
+and crime, and hard, grinding labor.
+
+I want you to come down and look at this Wolfe, standing there among the
+lowest of his kind, and see him just as he is, that you may judge him
+justly when you hear the story of this night. I want you to look back,
+as he does every day, at his birth in vice, his starved infancy; to
+remember the heavy years he has groped through as boy and man,--the
+slow, heavy years of constant, hot work. So long ago he began, that he
+thinks sometimes he has worked there for ages. There is no hope that it
+will ever end. Think that God put into this man's soul a fierce thirst
+for beauty,--to know it, to create it; to be--something, he knows not
+what,--other than he is. There are moments when a passing cloud, the sun
+glinting on the purple thistles, a kindly smile, a child's face, will
+rouse him to a passion of pain,--when his nature starts up with a mad
+cry of rage against God, man, whoever it is that has forced this vile,
+slimy life upon him. With all this groping, this mad desire, a great
+blind intellect stumbling through wrong, a loving poet's heart, the man
+was by habit only a coarse, vulgar laborer, familiar with sights and
+words you would blush to name. Be just: when I tell you about this
+night, see him as he is. Be just,--not like man's law, which seizes on
+one isolated fact, but like God's judging angel, whose clear, sad
+eye saw all the countless cankering days of this man's life, all the
+countless nights, when, sick with starving, his soul fainted in him,
+before it judged him for this night, the saddest of all.
+
+I called this night the crisis of his life. If it was, it stole on him
+unawares. These great turning-days of life cast no shadow before, slip
+by unconsciously. Only a trifle, a little turn of the rudder, and the
+ship goes to heaven or hell.
+
+Wolfe, while Deborah watched him, dug into the furnace of melting iron
+with his pole, dully thinking only how many rails the lump would yield.
+It was late,--nearly Sunday morning; another hour, and the heavy work
+would be done, only the furnaces to replenish and cover for the next
+day. The workmen were growing more noisy, shouting, as they had to do,
+to be heard over the deep clamor of the mills. Suddenly they grew less
+boisterous,--at the far end, entirely silent. Something unusual had
+happened. After a moment, the silence came nearer; the men stopped their
+jeers and drunken choruses. Deborah, stupidly lifting up her head,
+saw the cause of the quiet. A group of five or six men were slowly
+approaching, stopping to examine each furnace as they came. Visitors
+often came to see the mills after night: except by growing less noisy,
+the men took no notice of them. The furnace where Wolfe worked was near
+the bounds of the works; they halted there hot and tired: a walk over
+one of these great foundries is no trifling task. The woman, drawing out
+of sight, turned over to sleep. Wolfe, seeing them stop, suddenly roused
+from his indifferent stupor, and watched them keenly. He knew some
+of them: the overseer, Clarke,--a son of Kirby, one of the
+mill-owners,--and a Doctor May, one of the town-physicians. The other
+two were strangers. Wolfe came closer. He seized eagerly every chance
+that brought him into contact with this mysterious class that shone down
+on him perpetually with the glamour of another order of being. What made
+the difference between them? That was the mystery of his life. He had
+a vague notion that perhaps to-night he could find it out. One of the
+strangers sat down on a pile of bricks, and beckoned young Kirby to his
+side.
+
+"This is hot, with a vengeance. A match, please?"--lighting his cigar.
+"But the walk is worth the trouble. If it were not that you must have
+heard it so often, Kirby, I would tell you that your works look like
+Dante's Inferno."
+
+Kirby laughed.
+
+"Yes. Yonder is Farinata himself in the burning tomb,"--pointing to some
+figure in the shimmering shadows.
+
+"Judging from some of the faces of your men," said the other, "they bid
+fair to try the reality of Dante's vision, some day."
+
+Young Kirby looked curiously around, as if seeing the faces of his hands
+for the first time.
+
+"They're bad enough, that's true. A desperate set, I fancy. Eh, Clarke?"
+
+The overseer did not hear him. He was talking of net profits just
+then,--giving, in fact, a schedule of the annual business of the firm to
+a sharp peering little Yankee, who jotted down notes on a paper laid on
+the crown of his hat: a reporter for one of the city-papers, getting up
+a series of reviews of the leading manufactories. The other gentlemen
+had accompanied them merely for amusement. They were silent until the
+notes were finished, drying their feet at the furnaces, and sheltering
+their faces from the intolerable heat. At last the overseer concluded
+with--
+
+"I believe that is a pretty fair estimate, Captain."
+
+"Here, some of you men!" said Kirby, "bring up those boards. We may as
+well sit down, gentlemen, until the rain is over. It cannot last much
+longer at this rate."
+
+"Pig-metal,"--mumbled the reporter,--"um! coal facilities,--um! hands
+employed, twelve hundred,--bitumen,--um!--all right, I believe, Mr.
+Clarke;--sinking-fund,--what did you say was your sinking-fund?"
+
+"Twelve hundred hands?" said the stranger, the young man who had first
+spoken. "Do you control their votes, Kirby?"
+
+"Control? No." The young man smiled complacently. "But my father brought
+seven hundred votes to the polls for his candidate last November.
+No force-work, you understand,--only a speech or two, a hint to form
+themselves into a society, and a bit of red and blue bunting to make
+them a flag. The Invincible Roughs,--I believe that is their name. I
+forget the motto: 'Our country's hope,' I think."
+
+There was a laugh. The young man talking to Kirby sat with an amused
+light in his cool gray eye, surveying critically the half-clothed
+figures of the puddlers, and the slow swing of their brawny muscles. He
+was a stranger in the city,--spending a couple of months in the
+borders of a Slave State, to study the institutions of the South,--a
+brother-in-law of Kirby's,--Mitchell. He was an amateur gymnast,--hence
+his anatomical eye; a patron, in a blase' way, of the prize-ring; a man
+who sucked the essence out of a science or philosophy in an indifferent,
+gentlemanly way; who took Kant, Novalis, Humboldt, for what they were
+worth in his own scales; accepting all, despising nothing, in heaven,
+earth, or hell, but one-idead men; with a temper yielding and brilliant
+as summer water, until his Self was touched, when it was ice, though
+brilliant still. Such men are not rare in the States.
+
+As he knocked the ashes from his cigar, Wolfe caught with a quick
+pleasure the contour of the white hand, the blood-glow of a red ring he
+wore. His voice, too, and that of Kirby's, touched him like music,--low,
+even, with chording cadences. About this man Mitchell hung the
+impalpable atmosphere belonging to the thoroughbred gentleman, Wolfe,
+scraping away the ashes beside him, was conscious of it, did obeisance
+to it with his artist sense, unconscious that he did so.
+
+The rain did not cease. Clarke and the reporter left the mills; the
+others, comfortably seated near the furnace, lingered, smoking
+and talking in a desultory way. Greek would not have been more
+unintelligible to the furnace-tenders, whose presence they soon forgot
+entirely. Kirby drew out a newspaper from his pocket and read aloud some
+article, which they discussed eagerly. At every sentence, Wolfe listened
+more and more like a dumb, hopeless animal, with a duller, more stolid
+look creeping over his face, glancing now and then at Mitchell, marking
+acutely every smallest sign of refinement, then back to himself, seeing
+as in a mirror his filthy body, his more stained soul.
+
+Never! He had no words for such a thought, but he knew now, in all the
+sharpness of the bitter certainty, that between them there was a great
+gulf never to be passed. Never!
+
+The bell of the mills rang for midnight. Sunday morning had dawned.
+Whatever hidden message lay in the tolling bells floated past these men
+unknown. Yet it was there. Veiled in the solemn music ushering the risen
+Saviour was a key-note to solve the darkest secrets of a world gone
+wrong,--even this social riddle which the brain of the grimy puddler
+grappled with madly to-night.
+
+The men began to withdraw the metal from the caldrons. The mills were
+deserted on Sundays, except by the hands who fed the fires, and those
+who had no lodgings and slept usually on the ash-heaps. The three
+strangers sat still during the next hour, watching the men cover the
+furnaces, laughing now and then at some jest of Kirby's.
+
+"Do you know," said Mitchell, "I like this view of the works better than
+when the glare was fiercest? These heavy shadows and the amphitheatre
+of smothered fires are ghostly, unreal. One could fancy these red
+smouldering lights to be the half-shut eyes of wild beasts, and the
+spectral figures their victims in the den."
+
+Kirby laughed. "You are fanciful. Come, let us get out of the den. The
+spectral figures, as you call them, are a little too real for me to
+fancy a close proximity in the darkness,--unarmed, too."
+
+The others rose, buttoning their overcoats, and lighting cigars.
+
+"Raining, still," said Doctor May, "and hard. Where did we leave the
+coach, Mitchell?"
+
+"At the other side of the works.--Kirby, what's that?"
+
+Mitchell started back, half-frightened, as, suddenly turning a corner,
+the white figure of a woman faced him in the darkness,--a woman, white,
+of giant proportions, crouching on the ground, her arms flung out in
+some wild gesture of warning.
+
+"Stop! Make that fire burn there!" cried Kirby, stopping short.
+
+The flame burst out, flashing the gaunt figure into bold relief.
+
+Mitchell drew a long breath.
+
+"I thought it was alive," he said, going up curiously.
+
+The others followed.
+
+"Not marble, eh?" asked Kirby, touching it.
+
+One of the lower overseers stopped.
+
+"Korl, Sir."
+
+"Who did it?"
+
+"Can't say. Some of the hands; chipped it out in off-hours."
+
+"Chipped to some purpose, I should say. What a flesh-tint the stuff has!
+Do you see, Mitchell?"
+
+"I see."
+
+He had stepped aside where the light fell boldest on the figure, looking
+at it in silence. There was not one line of beauty or grace in it: a
+nude woman's form, muscular, grown coarse with labor, the powerful limbs
+instinct with some one poignant longing. One idea: there it was in the
+tense, rigid muscles, the clutching hands, the wild, eager face, like
+that of a starving wolf's. Kirby and Doctor May walked around it,
+critical, curious. Mitchell stood aloof, silent. The figure touched him
+strangely.
+
+"Not badly done," said Doctor May, "Where did the fellow learn that
+sweep of the muscles in the arm and hand? Look at them! They are
+groping, do you see?--clutching: the peculiar action of a man dying of
+thirst."
+
+"They have ample facilities for studying anatomy," sneered Kirby,
+glancing at the half-naked figures.
+
+"Look," continued the Doctor, "at this bony wrist, and the strained
+sinews of the instep! A working-woman,--the very type of her class."
+
+"God forbid!" muttered Mitchell.
+
+"Why?" demanded May, "What does the fellow intend by the figure? I
+cannot catch the meaning."
+
+"Ask him," said the other, dryly, "There he stands,"--pointing to Wolfe,
+who stood with a group of men, leaning on his ash-rake.
+
+The Doctor beckoned him with the affable smile which kind-hearted men
+put on, when talking to these people.
+
+"Mr. Mitchell has picked you out as the man who did this,--I'm sure I
+don't know why. But what did you mean by it?"
+
+"She be hungry."
+
+Wolfe's eyes answered Mitchell, not the Doctor.
+
+"Oh-h! But what a mistake you have made, my fine fellow! You have given
+no sign of starvation to the body. It is strong,--terribly strong. It
+has the mad, half-despairing gesture of drowning."
+
+Wolfe stammered, glanced appealingly at Mitchell, who saw the soul of
+the thing, he knew. But the cool, probing eyes were turned on himself
+now,--mocking, cruel, relentless.
+
+"Not hungry for meat," the furnace-tender said at last.
+
+"What then? Whiskey?" jeered Kirby, with a coarse laugh.
+
+Wolfe was silent a moment, thinking.
+
+"I dunno," he said, with a bewildered look. "It mebbe. Summat to make
+her live, I think,--like you. Whiskey ull do it, in a way."
+
+The young man laughed again. Mitchell flashed a look of disgust
+somewhere,--not at Wolfe.
+
+"May," he broke out impatiently, "are you blind? Look at that woman's
+face! It asks questions of God, and says, 'I have a right to know,' Good
+God, how hungry it is!"
+
+They looked a moment; then May turned to the mill-owner:--
+
+"Have you many such hands as this? What are you going to do with them?
+Keep them at puddling iron?"
+
+Kirby shrugged his shoulders. Mitchell's look had irritated him.
+
+"Ce n'est pas mon affaire. I have no fancy for nursing infant geniuses.
+I suppose there are some stray gleams of mind and soul among these
+wretches. The Lord will take care of his own; or else they can work out
+their own salvation. I have heard you call our American system a ladder
+which any man can scale. Do you doubt it? Or perhaps you want to banish
+all social ladders, and put us all on a flat table-land,--eh, May?"
+
+The Doctor looked vexed, puzzled. Some terrible problem lay hid in this
+woman's face, and troubled these men. Kirby waited for an answer, and,
+receiving none, went on, warming with his subject.
+
+"I tell you, there's something wrong that no talk of 'Liberte' or
+'Egalite' will do away. If I had the making of men, these men who do
+the lowest part of the world's work should be machines,--nothing
+more,--hands. It would be kindness. God help them! What are taste,
+reason, to creatures who must live such lives as that?" He pointed to
+Deborah, sleeping on the ash-heap. "So many nerves to sting them to
+pain. What if God had put your brain, with all its agony of touch, into
+your fingers, and bid you work and strike with that?"
+
+"You think you could govern the world better?" laughed the Doctor.
+
+"I do not think at all."
+
+"That is true philosophy. Drift with the stream, because you cannot dive
+deep enough to find bottom, eh?"
+
+"Exactly," rejoined Kirby. "I do not think. I wash my hands of all
+social problems,--slavery, caste, white or black. My duty to my
+operatives has a narrow limit,--the pay-hour on Saturday night. Outside
+of that, if they cut korl, or cut each other's throats, (the more
+popular amusement of the two,) I am not responsible."
+
+The Doctor sighed,--a good honest sigh, from the depths of his stomach.
+
+"God help us! Who is responsible?"
+
+"Not I, I tell you," said Kirby, testily. "What has the man who pays
+them money to do with their souls' concerns, more than the grocer or
+butcher who takes it?"
+
+"And yet," said Mitchell's cynical voice, "look at her! How hungry she
+is!"
+
+Kirby tapped his boot with his cane. No one spoke. Only the dumb face of
+the rough image looking into their faces with the awful question, "What
+shall we do to be saved?" Only Wolfe's face, with its heavy weight
+of brain, its weak, uncertain mouth, its desperate eyes, out of which
+looked the soul of his class,--only Wolfe's face turned towards Kirby's.
+Mitchell laughed,--a cool, musical laugh.
+
+"Money has spoken!" he said, seating himself lightly on a stone with the
+air of an amused spectator at a play. "Are you answered?"--turning to
+Wolfe his clear, magnetic face.
+
+Bright and deep and cold as Arctic air, the soul of the man lay tranquil
+beneath. He looked at the furnace-tender as he had looked at a rare
+mosaic in the morning; only the man was the more amusing study of the
+two.
+
+"Are you answered? Why, May, look at him! 'De profundis clamavi.' Or, to
+quote in English, 'Hungry and thirsty, his soul faints in him.' And so
+Money sends back its answer into the depths through you, Kirby! Very
+clear the answer, too!--I think I remember reading the same words
+somewhere: washing your hands in Eau de Cologne, and saying, 'I am
+innocent of the blood of this man. See ye to it!'"
+
+Kirby flushed angrily.
+
+"You quote Scripture freely."
+
+"Do I not quote correctly? I think I remember another line, which may
+amend my meaning? 'Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these,
+ye did it unto me.' Deist? Bless you, man, I was raised on the milk of
+the Word. Now, Doctor, the pocket of the world having uttered its
+voice, what has the heart to say? You are a philanthropist, in a small
+Way,--n'est ce pas? Here, boy, this gentleman can show you how to cut
+korl better,--or your destiny. Go on, May!"
+
+"I think a mocking devil possesses you to-night," rejoined the Doctor,
+seriously.
+
+He went to Wolfe and put his hand kindly on his arm. Something of a
+vague idea possessed the Doctor's brain that much good was to be done
+here by a friendly word or two: a latent genius to be warmed into life
+by a waited-for sunbeam. Here it was: he had brought it. So he went on
+complacently:
+
+"Do you know, boy, you have it in you to be a great sculptor, a great
+man? do you understand?" (talking down to the capacity of his hearer:
+it is a way people have with children, and men like Wolfe,)--"to live a
+better, stronger life than I, or Mr. Kirby here? A man may make himself
+anything he chooses. God has given you stronger powers than many
+men,--me, for instance."
+
+May stopped, heated, glowing with his own magnanimity. And it was
+magnanimous. The puddler had drunk in every word, looking through the
+Doctor's flurry, and generous heat, and self-approval, into his will,
+with those slow, absorbing eyes of his.
+
+"Make yourself what you will. It is your right.
+
+"I know," quietly. "Will you help me?"
+
+Mitchell laughed again. The Doctor turned now, in a passion,--
+
+"You know, Mitchell, I have not the means. You know, if I had, it is in
+my heart to take this boy and educate him for"--
+
+"The glory of God, and the glory of John May."
+
+May did not speak for a moment; then, controlled, he said,--
+
+"Why should one be raised, when myriads are left?--I have not the money,
+boy," to Wolfe, shortly.
+
+"Money?" He said it over slowly, as one repeats the guessed answer to a
+riddle, doubtfully. "That is it? Money?"
+
+"Yes, money,--that is it," said Mitchell, rising, and drawing his
+furred coat about him. "You've found the cure for all the world's
+diseases.--Come, May, find your good-humor, and come home. This
+damp wind chills my very bones. Come and preach your Saint-Simonian
+doctrines' to-morrow to Kirby's hands. Let them have a clear idea of the
+rights of the soul, and I'll venture next week they'll strike for higher
+wages. That will be the end of it."
+
+"Will you send the coach-driver to this side of the mills?" asked Kirby,
+turning to Wolfe.
+
+He spoke kindly: it was his habit to do so. Deborah, seeing the puddler
+go, crept after him. The three men waited outside. Doctor May walked up
+and down, chafed. Suddenly he stopped.
+
+"Go back, Mitchell! You say the pocket and the heart of the world
+speak without meaning to these people. What has its head to say? Taste,
+culture, refinement? Go!"
+
+Mitchell was leaning against a brick wall. He turned his head
+indolently, and looked into the mills. There hung about the place a
+thick, unclean odor. The slightest motion of his hand marked that he
+perceived it, and his insufferable disgust. That was all. May said
+nothing, only quickened his angry tramp.
+
+"Besides," added Mitchell, giving a corollary to his answer, "it would
+be of no use. I am not one of them."
+
+"You do not mean"--said May, facing him.
+
+"Yes, I mean just that. Reform is born of need, not pity. No vital
+movement of the people's has worked down, for good or evil; fermented,
+instead, carried up the heaving, cloggy mass. Think back through
+history, and you will know it. What will this lowest deep--thieves,
+Magdalens, negroes--do with the light filtered through ponderous Church
+creeds, Baconian theories, Goethe schemes? Some day, out of their bitter
+need will be thrown up their own light-bringer,--their Jean Paul, their
+Cromwell, their Messiah."
+
+"Bah!" was the Doctor's inward criticism. However, in practice, he
+adopted the theory; for, when, night and morning, afterwards, he prayed
+that power might be given these degraded souls to rise, he glowed at
+heart, recognizing an accomplished duty.
+
+Wolfe and the woman had stood in the shadow of the works as the coach
+drove off. The Doctor had held out his hand in a frank, generous way,
+telling him to "take care of himself, and to remember it was his right
+to rise." Mitchell had simply touched his hat, as to an equal, with a
+quiet look of thorough recognition. Kirby had thrown Deborah some money,
+which she found, and clutched eagerly enough. They were gone now, all
+of them. The man sat down on the cinder-road, looking up into the murky
+sky.
+
+"'T be late, Hugh. Wunnot hur come?"
+
+He shook his head doggedly, and the woman crouched out of his sight
+against the wall. Do you remember rare moments when a sudden
+light flashed over yourself, your world, God? when you stood on a
+mountain-peak, seeing your life as it might have been, as it is? one
+quick instant, when custom lost its force and every-day usage? when your
+friend, wife, brother, stood in a new light? your soul was bared, and
+the grave,--a foretaste of the nakedness of the Judgment-Day? So it came
+before him, his life, that night. The slow tides of pain he had borne
+gathered themselves up and surged against his soul. His squalid daily
+life, the brutal coarseness eating into his brain, as the ashes into
+his skin: before, these things had been a dull aching into his
+consciousness; to-night, they were reality. He griped the filthy red
+shirt that clung, stiff with soot, about him, and tore it savagely from
+his arm. The flesh beneath was muddy with grease and ashes,--and the
+heart beneath that! And the soul? God knows.
+
+Then flashed before his vivid poetic sense the man who had left
+him,--the pure face, the delicate, sinewy limbs, in harmony with all he
+knew of beauty or truth. In his cloudy fancy he had pictured a Something
+like this. He had found it in this Mitchell, even when he idly
+scoffed at his pain: a Man all-knowing, all-seeing, crowned by Nature,
+reigning,--the keen glance of his eye falling like a sceptre on other
+men. And yet his instinct taught him that he too--He! He looked at
+himself with sudden loathing, sick, wrung his hands With a cry, and then
+was silent. With all the phantoms of his heated, ignorant fancy, Wolfe
+had not been vague in his ambitions. They were practical, slowly built
+up before him out of his knowledge of what he could do. Through years
+he had day by day made this hope a real thing to himself,--a clear,
+projected figure of himself, as he might become.
+
+Able to speak, to know what was best, to raise these men and women
+working at his side up with him: sometimes he forgot this defined hope
+in the frantic anguish to escape, only to escape,--out of the wet, the
+pain, the ashes, somewhere, anywhere,--only for one moment of free air
+on a hill-side, to lie down and let his sick soul throb itself out in
+the sunshine. But to-night he panted for life. The savage strength of
+his nature was roused; his cry was fierce to God for justice.
+
+"Look at me!" he said to Deborah, with a low, bitter laugh, striking his
+puny chest savagely. "What am I worth, Deb? Is it my fault that I am no
+better? My fault? My fault?"
+
+He stopped, stung with a sudden remorse, seeing her hunchback shape
+writhing with sobs. For Deborah was crying thankless tears, according to
+the fashion of women.
+
+"God forgi' me, woman! Things go harder Wi' you nor me. It's a worse
+share."
+
+He got up and helped her to rise; and they went doggedly down the muddy
+street, side by side.
+
+"It's all wrong," he muttered, slowly,--"all wrong! I dunnot understan'.
+But it'll end some day."
+
+"Come home, Hugh!" she said, coaxingly; for he had stopped, looking
+around bewildered.
+
+"Home,--and back to the mill!" He went on saying this over to himself,
+as if he would mutter down every pain in this dull despair.
+
+She followed him through the fog, her blue lips chattering with cold.
+They reached the cellar at last. Old Wolfe had been drinking since she
+went out, and had crept nearer the door. The girl Janey slept heavily in
+the corner. He went up to her, touching softly the worn white arm with
+his fingers. Some bitterer thought stung him, as he stood there. He
+wiped the drops from his forehead, and went into the room beyond, livid,
+trembling. A hope, trifling, perhaps, but very dear, had died just then
+out of the poor puddler's life, as he looked at the sleeping, innocent
+girl,--some plan for the future, in which she had borne a part. He gave
+it up that moment, then and forever. Only a trifle, perhaps, to us: his
+face grew a shade paler,--that was all. But, somehow, the man's soul, as
+God and the angels looked down on it, never was the same afterwards.
+
+Deborah followed him into the inner room. She carried a candle, which
+she placed on the floor, closing the door after her. She had seen the
+look on his face, as he turned away: her own grew deadly. Yet, as she
+came up to him, her eyes glowed. He was seated on an old chest, quiet,
+holding his face in his hands.
+
+"Hugh!" she said, softly.
+
+He did not speak.
+
+"Hugh, did hur hear what the man said,--him with the clear voice? Did
+hur hear? Money, money,--that it wud do all?"
+
+He pushed her away,--gently, but he was worn out; her rasping tone
+fretted him.
+
+"Hugh!"
+
+The candle flared a pale yellow light over the cobwebbed brick walls,
+and the woman standing there. He looked at her. She was young, in
+deadly earnest; her faded eyes, and wet, ragged figure caught from their
+frantic eagerness a power akin to beauty.
+
+"Hugh, it is true! Money ull do it! Oh, Hugh, boy, listen till me! He
+said it true! It is money!"
+
+"I know. Go back! I do not want you here."
+
+"Hugh, it is t' last time. I'll never worrit hur again."
+
+There were tears in her voice now, but she choked them back:
+
+"Hear till me only to-night! If one of t' witch people wud come, them we
+heard oft' home, and gif hur all hur wants, what then? Say, Hugh!"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean money."
+
+Her whisper shrilled through his brain.
+
+"If one oft' witch dwarfs wud come from t' lane moors to-night, and gif
+hur money, to go out,--OUT, I say,--out, lad, where t' sun shines, and
+t' heath grows, and t' ladies walk in silken gownds, and God stays
+all t' time,--where t'man lives that talked to us to-night, Hugh
+knows,--Hugh could walk there like a king!"
+
+He thought the woman mad, tried to check her, but she went on, fierce in
+her eager haste.
+
+"If I were t' witch dwarf, if I had t' money, wud hur thank me? Wud hur
+take me out o' this place wid hur and Janey? I wud not come into the
+gran' house hur wud build, to vex hur wid t' hunch,--only at night, when
+t' shadows were dark, stand far off to see hur."
+
+Mad? Yes! Are many of us mad in this way?
+
+"Poor Deb! poor Deb!" he said, soothingly.
+
+"It is here," she said, suddenly, jerking into his hand a small roll. "I
+took it! I did it! Me, me!--not hur! I shall be hanged, I shall be burnt
+in hell, if anybody knows I took it! Out of his pocket, as he leaned
+against t' bricks. Hur knows?"
+
+She thrust it into his hand, and then, her errand done, began to gather
+chips together to make a fire, choking down hysteric sobs.
+
+"Has it come to this?"
+
+That was all he said. The Welsh Wolfe blood was honest. The roll was a
+small green pocket-book containing one or two gold pieces, and a check
+for an incredible amount, as it seemed to the poor puddler. He laid it
+down, hiding his face again in his hands.
+
+"Hugh, don't be angry wud me! It's only poor Deb,--hur knows?"
+
+He took the long skinny fingers kindly in his.
+
+"Angry? God help me, no! Let me sleep. I am tired."
+
+He threw himself heavily down on the wooden bench, stunned with pain and
+weariness. She brought some old rags to cover him.
+
+It was late on Sunday evening before he awoke. I tell God's truth, when
+I say he had then no thought of keeping this money. Deborah had hid it
+in his pocket. He found it there. She watched him eagerly, as he took it
+out.
+
+"I must gif it to him," he said, reading her face.
+
+"Hur knows," she said with a bitter sigh of disappointment. "But it is
+hur right to keep it."
+
+His right! The word struck him. Doctor May had used the same. He washed
+himself, and went out to find this man Mitchell. His right! Why did this
+chance word cling to him so obstinately? Do you hear the fierce devils
+whisper in his ear, as he went slowly down the darkening street?
+
+The evening came on, slow and calm. He seated himself at the end of
+an alley leading into one of the larger streets. His brain was clear
+to-night, keen, intent, mastering. It would not start back, cowardly,
+from any hellish temptation, but meet it face to face. Therefore the
+great temptation of his life came to him veiled by no sophistry, but
+bold, defiant, owning its own vile name, trusting to one bold blow for
+victory.
+
+He did not deceive himself. Theft! That was it. At first the word
+sickened him; then he grappled with it. Sitting there on a broken
+cart-wheel, the fading day, the noisy groups, the church-bells' tolling
+passed before him like a panorama, while the sharp struggle went on
+within. This money! He took it out, and looked at it. If he gave it
+back, what then? He was going to be cool about it.
+
+People going by to church saw only a sickly mill-boy watching them
+quietly at the alley's mouth. They did not know that he was mad, or they
+would not have gone by so quietly: mad with hunger; stretching out his
+hands to the world, that had given so much to them, for leave to live
+the life God meant him to live. His soul within him was smothering to
+death; he wanted so much, thought so much, and knew--nothing. There was
+nothing of which he was certain, except the mill and things there.
+Of God and heaven he had heard so little, that they were to him what
+fairy-land is to a child: something real, but not here; very far off.
+His brain, greedy, dwarfed, full of thwarted energy and unused powers,
+questioned these men and women going by, coldly, bitterly, that night.
+Was it not his right to live as they,--a pure life, a good, true-hearted
+life, full of beauty and kind words? He only wanted to know how to
+use the strength within him. His heart warmed, as he thought of it. He
+suffered himself to think of it longer. If he took the money?
+
+Then he saw himself as he might be, strong, helpful, kindly. The night
+crept on, as this one image slowly evolved itself from the crowd of
+other thoughts and stood triumphant. He looked at it. As he might be!
+What wonder, if it blinded him to delirium,--the madness that underlies
+all revolution, all progress, and all fall?
+
+You laugh at the shallow temptation? You see the error underlying
+its argument so clearly,--that to him a true life was one of full
+development rather than self-restraint? that he was deaf to the higher
+tone in a cry of voluntary suffering for truth's sake than in the
+fullest flow of spontaneous harmony? I do not plead his cause. I only
+want to show you the mote in my brother's eye: then you can see clearly
+to take it out.
+
+The money,--there it lay on his knee, a little blotted slip of paper,
+nothing in itself; used to raise him out of the pit, something straight
+from God's hand. A thief! Well, what was it to be a thief? He met the
+question at last, face to face, wiping the clammy drops of sweat
+from his forehead. God made this money--the fresh air, too--for his
+children's use. He never made the difference between poor and rich. The
+Something who looked down on him that moment through the cool gray sky
+had a kindly face, he knew,--loved his children alike. Oh, he knew that!
+
+There were times when the soft floods of color in the crimson and purple
+flames, or the clear depth of amber in the water below the bridge, had
+somehow given him a glimpse of another world than this,--of an infinite
+depth of beauty and of quiet somewhere,--somewhere, a depth of quiet
+and rest and love. Looking up now, it became strangely real. The sun had
+sunk quite below the hills, but his last rays struck upward, touching
+the zenith. The fog had risen, and the town and river were steeped in
+its thick, gray damp; but overhead, the sun-touched smoke-clouds opened
+like a cleft ocean,--shifting, rolling seas of crimson mist, waves of
+billowy silver veined with blood-scarlet, inner depths unfathomable of
+glancing light. Wolfe's artist-eye grew drunk with color. The gates of
+that other world! Fading, flashing before him now! What, in that world
+of Beauty, Content, and Right, were the petty laws, the mine and thine,
+of mill-owners and mill hands?
+
+A consciousness of power stirred within him. He stood up. A man,--he
+thought, stretching out his hands,--free to work, to live, to love!
+Free! His right! He folded the scrap of paper in his hand. As his
+nervous fingers took it in, limp and blotted, so his soul took in the
+mean temptation, lapped it in fancied rights, in dreams of improved
+existences, drifting and endless as the cloud-seas of color. Clutching
+it, as if the tightness of his hold would strengthen his sense of
+possession, he went aimlessly down the street. It was his watch at the
+mill. He need not go, need never go again, thank God!--shaking off the
+thought with unspeakable loathing.
+
+Shall I go over the history of the hours of that night? how the
+man wandered from one to another of his old haunts, with a
+half-consciousness of bidding them farewell,--lanes and alleys and
+back-yards where the mill-hands lodged,--noting, with a new eagerness,
+the filth and drunkenness, the pig-pens, the ash-heaps covered with
+potato-skins, the bloated, pimpled women at the doors, with a new
+disgust, a new sense of sudden triumph, and, under all, a new, vague
+dread, unknown before, smothered down, kept under, but still there? It
+left him but once during the night, when, for the second time in his
+life, he entered a church. It was a sombre Gothic pile, where the
+stained light lost itself in far-retreating arches; built to meet the
+requirements and sympathies of a far other class than Wolfe's. Yet
+it touched, moved him uncontrollably. The distances, the shadows, the
+still, marble figures, the mass of silent kneeling worshippers, the
+mysterious music, thrilled, lifted his soul with a wonderful pain.
+Wolfe forgot himself, forgot the new life he was going to live, the mean
+terror gnawing underneath. The voice of the speaker strengthened the
+charm; it was clear, feeling, full, strong. An old man, who had lived
+much, suffered much; whose brain was keenly alive, dominant; whose heart
+was summer-warm with charity. He taught it to-night. He held up Humanity
+in its grand total; showed the great world-cancer to his people. Who
+could show it better? He was a Christian reformer; he had studied the
+age thoroughly; his outlook at man had been free, world-wide, over all
+time. His faith stood sublime upon the Rock of Ages; his fiery zeal
+guided vast schemes by which the Gospel was to be preached to all
+nations. How did he preach it to-night? In burning, light-laden words he
+painted Jesus, the incarnate Life, Love, the universal Man: words
+that became reality in the lives of these people,--that lived again in
+beautiful words and actions, trifling, but heroic. Sin, as he defined
+it, was a real foe to them; their trials, temptations, were his. His
+words passed far over the furnace-tender's grasp, toned to suit another
+class of culture; they sounded in his ears a very pleasant song in an
+unknown tongue. He meant to cure this world-cancer with a steady eye
+that had never glared with hunger, and a hand that neither poverty nor
+strychnine-whiskey had taught to shake. In this morbid, distorted heart
+of the Welsh puddler he had failed.
+
+Eighteen centuries ago, the Master of this man tried reform in the
+streets of a city as crowded and vile as this, and did not fail.
+His disciple, showing Him to-night to cultured hearers, showing the
+clearness of the God-power acting through Him, shrank back from one
+coarse fact; that in birth and habit the man Christ was thrown up from
+the lowest of the people: his flesh, their flesh; their blood, his
+blood; tempted like them, to brutalize day by day; to lie, to steal: the
+actual slime and want of their hourly life, and the wine-press he trod
+alone.
+
+Yet, is there no meaning in this perpetually covered truth? If the son
+of the carpenter had stood in the church that night, as he stood with
+the fishermen and harlots by the sea of Galilee, before His Father and
+their Father, despised and rejected of men, without a place to lay His
+head, wounded for their iniquities, bruised for their transgressions,
+would not that hungry mill-boy at least, in the back seat, have "known
+the man"? That Jesus did not stand there.
+
+Wolfe rose at last, and turned from the church down the street. He
+looked up; the night had come on foggy, damp; the golden mists had
+vanished, and the sky lay dull and ash-colored. He wandered again
+aimlessly down the street, idly wondering what had become of the
+cloud-sea of crimson and scarlet. The trial-day of this man's life
+was over, and he had lost the victory. What followed was mere drifting
+circumstance,--a quicker walking over the path,--that was all. Do you
+want to hear the end of it? You wish me to make a tragic story out of
+it? Why, in the police-reports of the morning paper you can find a dozen
+such tragedies: hints of shipwrecks unlike any that ever befell on the
+high seas; hints that here a power was lost to heaven,--that there a
+soul went down where no tide can ebb or flow. Commonplace enough the
+hints are,--jocose sometimes, done up in rhyme.
+
+Doctor May a month after the night I have told you of, was reading to
+his wife at breakfast from this fourth column of the morning-paper:
+an unusual thing,--these police-reports not being, in general, choice
+reading for ladies; but it was only one item he read.
+
+"Oh, my dear! You remember that man I told you of, that we saw at
+Kirby's mill?--that was arrested for robbing Mitchell? Here he is; just
+listen:--'Circuit Court. Judge Day. Hugh Wolfe, operative in Kirby &
+John's Loudon Mills. Charge, grand larceny. Sentence, nineteen years
+hard labor in penitentiary. Scoundrel! Serves him right! After all our
+kindness that night! Picking Mitchell's pocket at the very time!"
+
+His wife said something about the ingratitude of that kind of people,
+and then they began to talk of something else.
+
+Nineteen years! How easy that was to read! What a simple word for Judge
+Day to utter! Nineteen years! Half a lifetime!
+
+Hugh Wolfe sat on the window-ledge of his cell, looking out. His ankles
+Were ironed. Not usual in such cases; but he had made two desperate
+efforts to escape. "Well," as Haley, the jailer, said, "small blame
+to him! Nineteen years' imprisonment was not a pleasant thing to look
+forward to." Haley was very good-natured about it, though Wolfe had
+fought him savagely.
+
+"When he was first caught," the jailer said afterwards, in telling the
+story, "before the trial, the fellow was cut down at once,--laid there
+on that pallet like a dead man, with his hands over his eyes. Never saw
+a man so cut down in my life. Time of the trial, too, came the queerest
+dodge of any customer I ever had. Would choose no lawyer. Judge gave him
+one, of course. Gibson it Was. He tried to prove the fellow crazy; but
+it wouldn't go. Thing was plain as daylight: money found on him. 'T was
+a hard sentence,--all the law allows; but it was for 'xample's sake.
+These mill-hands are gettin' onbearable. When the sentence was read, he
+just looked up, and said the money was his by rights, and that all the
+world had gone wrong. That night, after the trial, a gentleman came to
+see him here, name of Mitchell,--him as he stole from. Talked to him for
+an hour. Thought he came for curiosity, like. After he was gone, thought
+Wolfe was remarkable quiet, and went into his cell. Found him very low;
+bed all bloody. Doctor said he had been bleeding at the lungs. He was
+as weak as a cat; yet if ye'll b'lieve me, he tried to get a-past me and
+get out. I just carried him like a baby, and threw him on the pallet.
+Three days after, he tried it again: that time reached the wall. Lord
+help you! he fought like a tiger,--giv' some terrible blows. Fightin'
+for life, you see; for he can't live long, shut up in the stone crib
+down yonder. Got a death-cough now. 'T took two of us to bring him down
+that day; so I just put the irons on his feet. There he sits, in there.
+Goin' to-morrow, with a batch more of 'em. That woman, hunchback, tried
+with him,--you remember?--she's only got three years. 'Complice. But
+she's a woman, you know. He's been quiet ever since I put on irons:
+giv' up, I suppose. Looks white, sick-lookin'. It acts different on 'em,
+bein' sentenced. Most of 'em gets reckless, devilish-like. Some prays
+awful, and sings them vile songs of the mills, all in a breath. That
+woman, now, she's desper't'. Been beggin' to see Hugh, as she calls him,
+for three days. I'm a-goin' to let her in. She don't go with him. Here
+she is in this next cell. I'm a-goin' now to let her in."
+
+He let her in. Wolfe did not see her. She crept into a corner of the
+cell, and stood watching him. He was scratching the iron bars of
+the window with a piece of tin which he had picked up, with an idle,
+uncertain, vacant stare, just as a child or idiot would do.
+
+"Tryin' to get out, old boy?" laughed Haley. "Them irons will need a
+crow-bar beside your tin, before you can open 'em."
+
+Wolfe laughed, too, in a senseless way.
+
+"I think I'll get out," he said.
+
+"I believe his brain's touched," said Haley, when he came out.
+
+The puddler scraped away with the tin for half an hour. Still Deborah
+did not speak. At last she ventured nearer, and touched his arm.
+
+"Blood?" she said, looking at some spots on his coat with a shudder.
+
+He looked up at her, "Why, Deb!" he said, smiling,--such a bright,
+boyish smile, that it Went to poor Deborah's heart directly, and she
+sobbed and cried out loud.
+
+"Oh, Hugh, lad! Hugh! dunnot look at me, when it wur my fault! To think
+I brought hur to it! And I loved hur so! Oh lad, I dud!"
+
+The confession, even In this wretch, came with the woman's blush through
+the sharp cry.
+
+He did not seem to hear her,--scraping away diligently at the bars with
+the bit of tin.
+
+Was he going mad? She peered closely into his face. Something she saw
+there made her draw suddenly back,--something which Haley had not seen,
+that lay beneath the pinched, vacant look it had caught since the trial,
+or the curious gray shadow that rested on it. That gray shadow,--yes,
+she knew what that meant. She had often seen it creeping over women's
+faces for months, who died at last of slow hunger or consumption. That
+meant death, distant, lingering: but this--Whatever it was the woman
+saw, or thought she saw, used as she was to crime and misery, seemed to
+make her sick with a new horror. Forgetting her fear of him, she caught
+his shoulders, and looked keenly, steadily, into his eyes.
+
+"Hugh!" she cried, in a desperate whisper,--"oh, boy, not that! for
+God's sake, not that!"
+
+The vacant laugh went off his face, and he answered her in a muttered
+word or two that drove her away. Yet the words were kindly enough.
+Sitting there on his pallet, she cried silently a hopeless sort of
+tears, but did not speak again. The man looked up furtively at her now
+and then. Whatever his own trouble was, her distress vexed him with a
+momentary sting.
+
+It was market-day. The narrow window of the jail looked down directly on
+the carts and wagons drawn up in a long line, where they had unloaded.
+He could see, too, and hear distinctly the clink of money as it changed
+hands, the busy crowd of whites and blacks shoving, pushing one another,
+and the chaffering and swearing at the stalls. Somehow, the sound, more
+than anything else had done, wakened him up,--made the whole real to
+him. He was done with the world and the business of it. He let the tin
+fall, and looked out, pressing his face close to the rusty bars. How
+they crowded and pushed! And he,--he should never walk that pavement
+again! There came Neff Sanders, one of the feeders at the mill, with
+a basket on his arm. Sure enough, Nyeff was married the other week. He
+whistled, hoping he would look up; but he did not. He wondered if Neff
+remembered he was there,--if any of the boys thought of him up there,
+and thought that he never was to go down that old cinder-road again.
+Never again! He had not quite understood it before; but now he did. Not
+for days or years, but never!--that was it.
+
+How clear the light fell on that stall in front of the market! and how
+like a picture it was, the dark-green heaps of corn, and the crimson
+beets, and golden melons! There was another with game: how the light
+flickered on that pheasant's breast, with the purplish blood dripping
+over the brown feathers! He could see the red shining of the drops, it
+was so near. In one minute he could be down there. It was just a step.
+So easy, as it seemed, so natural to go! Yet it could never be--not in
+all the thousands of years to come--that he should put his foot on that
+street again! He thought of himself with a sorrowful pity, as of some
+one else. There was a dog down in the market, walking after his master
+with such a stately, grave look!--only a dog, yet he could go backwards
+and forwards just as he pleased: he had good luck! Why, the very vilest
+cur, yelping there in the gutter, had not lived his life, had been free
+to act out whatever thought God had put into his brain; while he--No, he
+would not think of that! He tried to put the thought away, and to listen
+to a dispute between a countryman and a woman about some meat; but it
+would come back. He, what had he done to bear this?
+
+Then came the sudden picture of what might have been, and now. He knew
+what it was to be in the penitentiary, how it went with men there. He
+knew how in these long years he should slowly die, but not until soul
+and body had become corrupt and rotten,--how, when he came out, if he
+lived to come, even the lowest of the mill-hands would jeer him,--how
+his hands would be weak, and his brain senseless and stupid. He believed
+he was almost that now. He put his hand to his head, with a puzzled,
+weary look. It ached, his head, with thinking. He tried to quiet
+himself. It was only right, perhaps; he had done wrong. But was there
+right or wrong for such as he? What was right? And who had ever taught
+him? He thrust the whole matter away. A dark, cold quiet crept through
+his brain. It was all wrong; but let it be! It was nothing to him more
+than the others. Let it be!
+
+The door grated, as Haley opened it.
+
+"Come, my woman! Must lock up for t' night. Come, stir yerself!"
+
+She went up and took Hugh's hand.
+
+"Good-night, Deb," he said, carelessly.
+
+She had not hoped he would say more; but the tired pain on her mouth
+just then was bitterer than death. She took his passive hand and kissed
+it.
+
+"Hur'll never see Deb again!" she ventured, her lips growing colder and
+more bloodless.
+
+What did she say that for? Did he not know it? Yet he would not be
+impatient with poor old Deb. She had trouble of her own, as well as he.
+
+"No, never again," he said, trying to be cheerful.
+
+She stood just a moment, looking at him. Do you laugh at her, standing
+there, with her hunchback, her rags, her bleared, withered face, and the
+great despised love tugging at her heart?
+
+"Come, you!" called Haley, impatiently.
+
+She did not move.
+
+"Hugh!" she whispered.
+
+It was to be her last word. What was it?
+
+"Hugh, boy, not THAT!"
+
+He did not answer. She wrung her hands, trying to be silent, looking in
+his face in an agony of entreaty. He smiled again, kindly.
+
+"It is best, Deb. I cannot bear to be hurted any more.
+
+"Hur knows," she said, humbly.
+
+"Tell my father good-bye; and--and kiss little Janey."
+
+She nodded, saying nothing, looked in his face again, and went out of
+the door. As she went, she staggered.
+
+"Drinkin' to-day?" broke out Haley, pushing her before him. "Where the
+Devil did you get it? Here, in with ye!" and he shoved her into her
+cell, next to Wolfe's, and shut the door.
+
+Along the wall of her cell there was a crack low down by the floor,
+through which she could see the light from Wolfe's. She had discovered
+it days before. She hurried in now, and, kneeling down by it, listened,
+hoping to hear some sound. Nothing but the rasping of the tin on the
+bars. He was at his old amusement again. Something in the noise jarred
+on her ear, for she shivered as she heard it. Hugh rasped away at the
+bars. A dull old bit of tin, not fit to cut korl with.
+
+He looked out of the window again. People were leaving the market now.
+A tall mulatto girl, following her mistress, her basket on her head,
+crossed the street just below, and looked up. She was laughing; but,
+when she caught sight of the haggard face peering out through the bars,
+suddenly grew grave, and hurried by. A free, firm step, a clear-cut
+olive face, with a scarlet turban tied on one side, dark, shining eyes,
+and on the head the basket poised, filled with fruit and flowers, under
+which the scarlet turban and bright eyes looked out half-shadowed. The
+picture caught his eye. It was good to see a face like that. He would
+try to-morrow, and cut one like it. To-morrow! He threw down the tin,
+trembling, and covered his face with his hands. When he looked up again,
+the daylight was gone.
+
+Deborah, crouching near by on the other side of the wall, heard no
+noise. He sat on the side of the low pallet, thinking. Whatever was the
+mystery which the woman had seen on his face, it came out now slowly,
+in the dark there, and became fixed,--a something never seen on his face
+before. The evening was darkening fast. The market had been over for an
+hour; the rumbling of the carts over the pavement grew more infrequent:
+he listened to each, as it passed, because he thought it was to be for
+the last time. For the same reason, it was, I suppose, that he strained
+his eyes to catch a glimpse of each passer-by, wondering who they were,
+what kind of homes they were going to, if they had children,--listening
+eagerly to every chance word in the street, as if--(God be merciful to
+the man! what strange fancy was this?)--as if he never should hear human
+voices again.
+
+It was quite dark at last. The street was a lonely one. The last
+passenger, he thought, was gone. No,--there was a quick step: Joe Hill,
+lighting the lamps. Joe was a good old chap; never passed a fellow
+without some joke or other. He remembered once seeing the place where
+he lived with his wife. "Granny Hill" the boys called her. Bedridden she
+Was; but so kind as Joe was to her! kept the room so clean!--and the old
+woman, when he was there, was laughing at some of "t' lad's foolishness."
+The step was far down the street; but he could see him place the ladder,
+run up, and light the gas. A longing seized him to be spoken to once
+more.
+
+"Joe!" he called, out of the grating. "Good-bye, Joe!"
+
+The old man stopped a moment, listening uncertainly; then hurried
+on. The prisoner thrust his hand out of the window, and called again,
+louder; but Joe was too far down the street. It was a little thing; but
+it hurt him,--this disappointment.
+
+"Good-bye, Joe!" he called, sorrowfully enough.
+
+"Be quiet!" said one of the jailers, passing the door, striking on it
+with his club.
+
+Oh, that was the last, was it?
+
+There was an inexpressible bitterness on his face, as he lay down on the
+bed, taking the bit of tin, which he had rasped to a tolerable degree
+of sharpness, in his hand,--to play with, it may be. He bared his arms,
+looking intently at their corded veins and sinews. Deborah, listening in
+the next cell, heard a slight clicking sound, often repeated. She shut
+her lips tightly, that she might not scream; the cold drops of sweat
+broke over her, in her dumb agony.
+
+"Hur knows best," she muttered at last, fiercely clutching the boards
+where she lay.
+
+If she could have seen Wolfe, there was nothing about him to frighten
+her. He lay quite still, his arms outstretched, looking at the pearly
+stream of moonlight coming into the window. I think in that one hour
+that came then he lived back over all the years that had gone before.
+I think that all the low, vile life, all his wrongs, all his starved
+hopes, came then, and stung him with a farewell poison that made him
+sick unto death. He made neither moan nor cry, only turned his worn
+face now and then to the pure light, that seemed so far off, as one that
+said, "How long, O Lord? how long?"
+
+The hour was over at last. The moon, passing over her nightly path,
+slowly came nearer, and threw the light across his bed on his feet. He
+watched it steadily, as it crept up, inch by inch, slowly. It seemed to
+him to carry with it a great silence. He had been so hot and tired there
+always in the mills! The years had been so fierce and cruel! There was
+coming now quiet and coolness and sleep. His tense limbs relaxed, and
+settled in a calm languor. The blood ran fainter and slow from his
+heart. He did not think now with a savage anger of what might be and was
+not; he was conscious only of deep stillness creeping over him. At first
+he saw a sea of faces: the mill-men,--women he had known, drunken and
+bloated,--Janey's timid and pitiful-poor old Debs: then they floated
+together like a mist, and faded away, leaving only the clear, pearly
+moonlight.
+
+Whether, as the pure light crept up the stretched-out figure, it brought
+with It calm and peace, who shall say? His dumb soul was alone with
+God in judgment. A Voice may have spoken for it from far-off Calvary,
+"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!" Who dare say?
+Fainter and fainter the heart rose and fell, slower and slower the moon
+floated from behind a cloud, until, when at last its full tide of white
+splendor swept over the cell, it seemed to wrap and fold into a deeper
+stillness the dead figure that never should move again. Silence deeper
+than the Night! Nothing that moved, save the black, nauseous stream of
+blood dripping slowly from the pallet to the floor!
+
+There was outcry and crowd enough in the cell the next day. The coroner
+and his jury, the local editors, Kirby himself, and boys with their
+hands thrust knowingly into their pockets and heads on one side, jammed
+into the corners. Coming and going all day. Only one woman. She
+came late, and outstayed them all. A Quaker, or Friend, as they call
+themselves. I think this woman Was known by that name in heaven. A
+homely body, coarsely dressed in gray and white. Deborah (for Haley had
+let her in) took notice of her. She watched them all--sitting on the
+end of the pallet, holding his head in her arms with the ferocity of a
+watch-dog, if any of them touched the body. There was no meekness, no
+sorrow, in her face; the stuff out of which murderers are made, instead.
+All the time Haley and the woman were laying straight the limbs and
+cleaning the cell, Deborah sat still, keenly watching the Quaker's face.
+Of all the crowd there that day, this woman alone had not spoken to
+her,--only once or twice had put some cordial to her lips. After they
+all were gone, the woman, in the same still, gentle way, brought a vase
+of wood-leaves and berries, and placed it by the pallet, then opened the
+narrow window. The fresh air blew in, and swept the woody fragrance over
+the dead face, Deborah looked up with a quick wonder.
+
+"Did hur know my boy wud like it? Did hur know Hugh?"
+
+"I know Hugh now."
+
+The white fingers passed in a slow, pitiful way over the dead, worn
+face. There was a heavy shadow in the quiet eyes.
+
+"Did hur know where they'll bury Hugh?" said Deborah in a shrill tone,
+catching her arm.
+
+This had been the question hanging on her lips all day.
+
+"In t' town-yard? Under t' mud and ash? T' lad'll smother, woman! He wur
+born in t' lane moor, where t' air is frick and strong. Take hur out,
+for God's sake, take hur out where t' air blows!"
+
+The Quaker hesitated, but only for a moment. She put her strong arm
+around Deborah and led her to the window.
+
+"Thee sees the hills, friend, over the river? Thee sees how the
+light lies warm there, and the winds of God blow all the day? I live
+there,--where the blue smoke is, by the trees. Look at me," She turned
+Deborah's face to her own, clear and earnest, "Thee will believe me? I
+will take Hugh and bury him there to-morrow."
+
+Deborah did not doubt her. As the evening wore on, she leaned against
+the iron bars, looking at the hills that rose far off, through the thick
+sodden clouds, like a bright, unattainable calm. As she looked, a shadow
+of their solemn repose fell on her face; its fierce discontent faded
+into a pitiful, humble quiet. Slow, solemn tears gathered in her eyes:
+the poor weak eyes turned so hopelessly to the place where Hugh was to
+rest, the grave heights looking higher and brighter and more solemn than
+ever before. The Quaker watched her keenly. She came to her at last, and
+touched her arm.
+
+"When thee comes back," she said, in a low, sorrowful tone, like one
+who speaks from a strong heart deeply moved with remorse or pity, "thee
+shall begin thy life again,--there on the hills. I came too late; but
+not for thee,--by God's help, it may be."
+
+Not too late. Three years after, the Quaker began her work. I end my
+story here. At evening-time it was light. There is no need to tire
+you with the long years of sunshine, and fresh air, and slow, patient
+Christ-love, needed to make healthy and hopeful this impure body and
+soul. There is a homely pine house, on one of these hills, whose windows
+overlook broad, wooded slopes and clover-crimsoned meadows,--niched into
+the very place where the light is warmest, the air freest. It is the
+Friends' meeting-house. Once a week they sit there, in their grave,
+earnest way, waiting for the Spirit of Love to speak, opening their
+simple hearts to receive His words. There is a woman, old, deformed, who
+takes a humble place among them: waiting like them: in her gray dress,
+her worn face, pure and meek, turned now and then to the sky. A woman
+much loved by these silent, restful people; more silent than they, more
+humble, more loving. Waiting: with her eyes turned to hills higher
+and purer than these on which she lives, dim and far off now, but to be
+reached some day. There may be in her heart some latent hope to meet
+there the love denied her here,--that she shall find him whom she lost,
+and that then she will not be all-unworthy. Who blames her? Something
+is lost in the passage of every soul from one eternity to the
+other,--something pure and beautiful, which might have been and was not:
+a hope, a talent, a love, over which the soul mourns, like Esau deprived
+of his birthright. What blame to the meek Quaker, if she took her lost
+hope to make the hills of heaven more fair?
+
+Nothing remains to tell that the poor Welsh puddler once lived, but this
+figure of the mill-woman cut in korl. I have it here in a corner of my
+library. I keep it hid behind a curtain,--it is such a rough, ungainly
+thing. Yet there are about it touches, grand sweeps of outline, that
+show a master's hand. Sometimes,--to-night, for instance,--the
+curtain is accidentally drawn back, and I see a bare arm stretched out
+imploringly in the darkness, and an eager, wolfish face watching mine: a
+wan, woful face, through which the spirit of the dead korl-cutter looks
+out, with its thwarted life, its mighty hunger, its unfinished work. Its
+pale, vague lips seem to tremble with a terrible question. "Is this the
+End?" they say,--"nothing beyond? no more?" Why, you tell me you have
+seen that look in the eyes of dumb brutes,--horses dying under the lash.
+I know.
+
+The deep of the night is passing while I write. The gas-light wakens
+from the shadows here and there the objects which lie scattered through
+the room: only faintly, though; for they belong to the open sunlight. As
+I glance at them, they each recall some task or pleasure of the coming
+day. A half-moulded child's head; Aphrodite; a bough of forest-leaves;
+music; work; homely fragments, in which lie the secrets of all eternal
+truth and beauty. Prophetic all! Only this dumb, woful face seems to
+belong to and end with the night. I turn to look at it. Has the power
+of its desperate need commanded the darkness away? While the room is yet
+steeped in heavy shadow, a cool, gray light suddenly touches its head
+like a blessing hand, and its groping arm points through the broken
+cloud to the far East, where, in the flickering, nebulous crimson, God
+has set the promise of the Dawn.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Life in the Iron-Mills, by Rebecca Harding Davis
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+*The Project Gutenberg Etext of Life in the Iron-Mills by Davis*
+#3 in our series by Rebecca Harding Davis
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+
+
+Life in the Iron-Mills
+by Rebecca Harding Davis
+
+
+
+
+"Is this the end?
+O Life, as futile, then, as frail!
+What hope of answer or redress?"
+
+
+A cloudy day:  do you know what that is in a town of iron-works?
+The sky sank down before dawn, muddy, flat, immovable.  The air
+is thick, clammy with the breath of crowded human beings.  It
+stifles me.  I open the window, and, looking out, can scarcely
+see through the rain the grocer's shop opposite, where a crowd
+of drunken Irishmen are puffing Lynchburg tobacco in their
+pipes.  I can detect the scent through all the foul smells
+ranging loose in the air.
+
+The idiosyncrasy of this town is smoke.  It rolls sullenly in
+slow folds from the great chimneys of the iron-foundries, and
+settles down in black, slimy pools on the muddy streets.  Smoke
+on the wharves, smoke on the dingy boats, on the yellow river,--
+clinging in a coating of greasy soot to the house-front, the two
+faded poplars, the faces of the passers-by.  The long train of
+mules, dragging masses of pig-iron through the narrow street,
+have a foul vapor hanging to their reeking sides.  Here, inside,
+is a little broken figure of an angel pointing upward from the
+mantel-shelf; but even its wings are covered with smoke, clotted
+and black.  Smoke everywhere!  A dirty canary chirps desolately
+in a cage beside me.  Its dream of green fields and sunshine is
+a very old dream,--almost worn out, I think.
+
+From the back-window I can see a narrow brick-yard sloping down
+to the river-side, strewed with rain-butts and tubs.  The river,
+dull and tawny-colored, (la belle riviere!) drags itself
+sluggishly along, tired of the heavy weight of boats and coal-
+barges.  What wonder?  When I was a child, I used to fancy a
+look of weary, dumb appeal upon the face of the negro-like river
+slavishly bearing its burden day after day.  Something of the
+same idle notion comes to me to-day, when from the street-window
+I look on the slow stream of human life creeping past, night and
+morning, to the great mills.  Masses of men, with dull, besotted
+faces bent to the ground, sharpened here and there by pain or
+cunning; skin and muscle and flesh begrimed with smoke and
+ashes; stooping all night over boiling caldrons of metal, laired
+by day in dens of drunkenness and infamy; breathing from infancy
+to death an air saturated with fog and grease and soot, vileness
+for soul and body.  What do you make of a case like that,
+amateur psychologist?  You call it an altogether serious thing
+to be alive:  to these men it is a drunken jest, a joke,--
+horrible to angels perhaps, to them commonplace enough.  My
+fancy about the river was an idle one:  it is no type of such a
+life.  What if it be stagnant and slimy here?  It knows that
+beyond there waits for it odorous sunlight, quaint old gardens,
+dusky with soft, green foliage of apple-trees, and flushing
+crimson with roses,--air, and fields, and mountains.  The future
+of the Welsh puddler passing just now is not so pleasant.  To be
+stowed away, after his grimy work is done, in a hole in the
+muddy graveyard, and after that, not air, nor green fields, nor
+curious roses.
+
+Can you see how foggy the day is?  As I stand here, idly tapping
+the windowpane, and looking out through the rain at the dirty
+back-yard and the coalboats below, fragments of an old story
+float up before me,--a story of this house into which I happened
+to come to-day.  You may think it a tiresome story enough, as
+foggy as the day, sharpened by no sudden flashes of pain or
+pleasure.--I know:  only the outline of a dull life, that long
+since, with thousands of dull lives like its own, was vainly
+lived and lost:  thousands of them, massed, vile, slimy lives,
+like those of the torpid lizards in yonder stagnant water-
+butt.--Lost?  There is a curious point for you to settle, my
+friend, who study psychology in a lazy, dilettante way.  Stop a
+moment.  I am going to be honest.  This is what I want you to
+do.  I want you to hide your disgust, take no heed to your clean
+clothes, and come right down with me,--here, into the thickest
+of the fog and mud and foul effluvia.  I want you to hear this
+story.  There is a secret down here, in this nightmare fog, that
+has lain dumb for centuries:  I want to make it a real thing to
+you.  You, Egoist, or Pantheist, or Arminian, busy in making
+straight paths for your feet on the hills, do not see it
+clearly,--this terrible question which men here have gone mad
+and died trying to answer.  I dare not put this secret into
+words.  I told you it was dumb.  These men, going by with
+drunken faces and brains full of unawakened power, do not ask it
+of Society or of God.  Their lives ask it; their deaths ask it.
+There is no reply.  I will tell you plainly that I have a great
+hope; and I bring it to you to be tested.  It is this:  that
+this terrible dumb question is its own reply; that it is not the
+sentence of death we think it, but, from the very extremity of
+its darkness, the most solemn prophecy which the world has known
+of the Hope to come.  I dare make my meaning no clearer, but
+will only tell my story.  It will, perhaps, seem to you as foul
+and dark as this thick vapor about us, and as pregnant with
+death; but if your eyes are free as mine are to look deeper, no
+perfume-tinted dawn will be so fair with promise of the day that
+shall surely come.
+
+My story is very simple,--Only what I remember of the life of
+one of these men,--a furnace-tender in one of Kirby & John's
+rolling-mills,--Hugh Wolfe.  You know the mills?  They took the
+great order for the lower Virginia railroads there last winter;
+run usually with about a thousand men.  I cannot tell why I
+choose the half-forgotten story of this Wolfe more than that of
+myriads of these furnace-hands.  Perhaps because there is a
+secret, underlying sympathy between that story and this day with
+its impure fog and thwarted sunshine,--or perhaps simply for the
+reason that this house is the one where the Wolfes lived.  There
+were the father and son,--both hands, as I said, in one of Kirby
+& John's mills for making railroad-iron,--and Deborah, their
+cousin, a picker in some of the cotton-mills.  The house was
+rented then to half a dozen families.  The Wolfes had two of the
+cellar-rooms.  The old man, like many of the puddlers and
+feeders of the mills, was Welsh,--had spent half of his life in
+the Cornish tin-mines.  You may pick the Welsh emigrants,
+Cornish miners, out of the throng passing the windows, any day.
+They are a trifle more filthy; their muscles are not so brawny;
+they stoop more.  When they are drunk, they neither yell, nor
+shout, nor stagger, but skulk along like beaten hounds.  A pure,
+unmixed blood, I fancy:  shows itself in the slight angular
+bodies and sharply-cut facial lines.  It is nearly thirty years
+since the Wolfes lived here.  Their lives were like those of
+their class:  incessant labor, sleeping in kennel-like rooms,
+eating rank pork and molasses, drinking--God and the distillers
+only know what; with an occasional night in jail, to atone for
+some drunken excess.  Is that all of their lives?--of the
+portion given to them and these their duplicates swarming the
+streets to-day?--nothing beneath?--all?  So many a political
+reformer will tell you,--and many a private reformer, too, who
+has gone among them with a heart tender with Christ's charity,
+and come out outraged, hardened.
+
+One rainy night, about eleven o'clock, a crowd of half-clothed
+women stopped outside of the cellar-door.  They were going home
+from the cotton-mill.
+
+"Good-night, Deb," said one, a mulatto, steadying herself
+against the gas-post.  She needed the post to steady her.  So
+did more than one of them.
+
+"Dah's a ball to Miss Potts' to-night.  Ye'd best come."
+
+"Inteet, Deb, if hur'll come, hur'll hef fun," said a shrill
+Welsh voice in the crowd.
+
+Two or three dirty hands were thrust out to catch the gown of
+the woman, who was groping for the latch of the door.
+
+"No."
+
+"No?  Where's Kit Small, then?"
+
+"Begorra! on the spools.  Alleys behint, though we helped her,
+we dud.  An wid ye!  Let Deb alone!  It's ondacent frettin' a
+quite body.  Be the powers, an we'll have a night of it!
+there'll be lashin's o' drink,--the Vargent be blessed and
+praised for't!"
+
+They went on, the mulatto inclining for a moment to show fight,
+and drag the woman Wolfe off with them; but, being pacified, she
+staggered away.
+
+Deborah groped her way into the cellar, and, after considerable
+stumbling, kindled a match, and lighted a tallow dip, that sent
+a yellow glimmer over the room.  It was low, damp,--the earthen
+floor covered with a green, slimy moss,--a fetid air smothering
+the breath.  Old Wolfe lay asleep on a heap of straw, wrapped in
+a torn horse-blanket.  He was a pale, meek little man, with a
+white face and red rabbit-eyes.  The woman Deborah was like him;
+only her face was even more ghastly, her lips bluer, her eyes
+more watery.  She wore a faded cotton gown and a slouching
+bonnet.  When she walked, one could see that she was deformed,
+almost a hunchback.  She trod softly, so as not to waken him,
+and went through into the room beyond.  There she found by the
+half-extinguished fire an iron saucepan filled with cold boiled
+potatoes, which she put upon a broken chair with a pint-cup of
+ale.  Placing the old candlestick beside this dainty repast, she
+untied her bonnet, which hung limp and wet over her face, and
+prepared to eat her supper.  It was the first food that had
+touched her lips since morning.  There was enough of it,
+however:  there is not always.  She was hungry,--one could see
+that easily enough,--and not drunk, as most of her companions
+would have been found at this hour.  She did not drink, this
+woman,--her face told that, too,--nothing stronger than ale.
+Perhaps the weak, flaccid wretch had some stimulant in her pale
+life to keep her up,--some love or hope, it might be, or urgent
+need.  When that stimulant was gone, she would take to whiskey.
+Man cannot live by work alone.  While she was skinning the
+potatoes, and munching them, a noise behind her made her stop.
+
+"Janey!" she called, lifting the candle and peering into the
+darkness.  "Janey, are you there?"
+
+A heap of ragged coats was heaved up, and the face of a
+young,girl emerged, staring sleepily at the woman.
+
+"Deborah," she said, at last, "I'm here the night."
+
+"Yes, child.  Hur's welcome," she said, quietly eating on.
+
+The girl's face was haggard and sickly; her eyes were heavy with
+sleep and hunger:  real Milesian eyes they were, dark, delicate
+blue, glooming out from black shadows with a pitiful fright.
+
+"I was alone," she said, timidly.
+
+"Where's the father?"  asked Deborah, holding out a potato,
+which the girl greedily seized.
+
+"He's beyant,--wid Haley,--in the stone house."  (Did you ever
+hear the word tail from an Irish mouth?) "I came here.  Hugh
+told me never to stay me-lone."
+
+"Hugh?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+A vexed frown crossed her face.  The girl saw it, and added
+quickly,--
+
+"I have not seen Hugh the day, Deb.  The old man says his watch
+lasts till the mornin'."
+
+The woman sprang up, and hastily began to arrange some bread and
+flitch in a tin pail, and to pour her own measure of ale into a
+bottle.  Tying on her bonnet, she blew out the candle.
+
+"Lay ye down, Janey dear," she said, gently, covering her with
+the old rags.  "Hur can eat the potatoes, if hur's hungry.
+
+"Where are ye goin', Deb?  The rain's sharp."
+
+"To the mill, with Hugh's supper."
+
+"Let him bide till th' morn.  Sit ye down."
+
+"No, no,"--sharply pushing her off.  "The boy'll starve."
+
+She hurried from the cellar, while the child wearily coiled
+herself up for sleep.  The rain was falling heavily, as the
+woman, pail in hand, emerged from the mouth of the alley, and
+turned down the narrow street, that stretched out, long and
+black, miles before her.  Here and there a flicker of gas
+lighted an uncertain space of muddy footwalk and gutter; the
+long rows of houses, except an occasional lager-bier shop, were
+closed; now and then she met a band of millhands skulking to or
+from their work.
+
+Not many even of the inhabitants of a manufacturing town know
+the vast machinery of system by which the bodies of workmen are
+governed, that goes on unceasingly from year to year.  The hands
+of each mill are divided into watches that relieve each other as
+regularly as the sentinels of an army.  By night and day the
+work goes on, the unsleeping engines groan and shriek, the fiery
+pools of metal boil and surge.  Only for a day in the week, in
+half-courtesy to public censure, the fires are partially veiled;
+but as soon as the clock strikes midnight, the great furnaces
+break forth with renewed fury, the clamor begins with fresh,
+breathless vigor, the engines sob and shriek like "gods in
+pain."
+
+As Deborah hurried down through the heavy rain, the noise of
+these thousand engines sounded through the sleep and shadow of
+the city like far-off thunder.  The mill to which she was going
+lay on the river, a mile below the city-limits.  It was far, and
+she was weak, aching from standing twelve hours at the spools.
+Yet it was her almost nightly walk to take this man his supper,
+though at every square she sat down to rest, and she knew she
+should receive small word of thanks.
+
+Perhaps, if she had possessed an artist's eye, the picturesque
+oddity of the scene might have made her step stagger less, and
+the path seem shorter; but to her the mills were only "summat
+deilish to look at by night."
+
+The road leading to the mills had been quarried from the solid
+rock, which rose abrupt and bare on one side of the cinder-
+covered road, while the river, sluggish and black, crept past on
+the other.  The mills for rolling iron are simply immense tent-
+like roofs, covering acres of ground, open on every side.
+Beneath these roofs Deborah looked in on a city of fires, that
+burned hot and fiercely in the night.  Fire in every horrible
+form:  pits of flame waving in the wind; liquid metal-flames
+writhing in tortuous streams through the sand; wide caldrons
+filled with boiling fire, over which bent ghastly wretches
+stirring the strange brewing; and through all, crowds of half-
+clad men, looking like revengeful ghosts in the red light,
+hurried, throwing masses of glittering fire.  It was like a
+street in Hell.  Even Deborah muttered, as she crept through,
+"looks like t' Devil's place!"  It did,--in more ways than one.
+
+She found the man she was looking for, at last, heaping coal on
+a furnace.  He had not time to eat his supper; so she went
+behind the furnace, and waited.  Only a few men were with him,
+and they noticed her only by a "Hyur comes t'hunchback, Wolfe."
+
+Deborah was stupid with sleep; her back pained her sharply; and
+her teeth chattered with cold, with the rain that soaked her
+clothes and dripped from her at every step.  She stood, however,
+patiently holding the pail, and waiting.
+
+"Hout, woman! ye look like a drowned cat.  Come near to the
+fire,"--said one of the men, approaching to scrape away the
+ashes.
+
+She shook her head.  Wolfe had forgotten her.  He turned,
+hearing the man, and came closer.
+
+"I did no' think; gi' me my supper, woman.
+
+She watched him eat with a painful eagerness.  With a woman's
+quick instinct, she saw that he was not hungry,--was eating to
+please her.  Her pale, watery eyes began to gather a strange
+light.
+
+"Is't good, Hugh?  T' ale was a bit sour, I feared."
+
+"No, good enough."  He hesitated a moment.  "Ye're tired, poor
+lass!  Bide here till I go.  Lay down there on that heap of ash,
+and go to sleep."
+
+He threw her an old coat for a pillow, and turned to his work.
+The heap was the refuse of the burnt iron, and was not a hard
+bed; the half-smothered warmth, too, penetrated her limbs,
+dulling their pain and cold shiver.
+
+Miserable enough she looked, lying there on the ashes like a
+limp, dirty rag,--yet not an unfitting figure to crown the scene
+of hopeless discomfort and veiled crime:  more fitting, if one
+looked deeper into the heart of things, at her thwarted woman's
+form, her colorless life, her waking stupor that smothered pain
+and hunger,--even more fit to be a type of her class.  Deeper
+yet if one could look, was there nothing worth reading in this
+wet, faded thing, halfcovered with ashes?  no story of a soul
+filled with groping passionate love, heroic unselfishness,
+fierce jealousy?  of years of weary trying to please the one
+human being whom she loved, to gain one look of real heart-
+kindness from him?  If anything like this were hidden beneath
+the pale, bleared eyes, and dull, washed-out-looking face, no
+one had ever taken the trouble to read its faint signs:  not the
+half-clothed furnace-tender, Wolfe, certainly.  Yet he was kind
+to her:  it was his nature to be kind, even to the very rats
+that swarmed in the cellar:  kind to her in just the same way.
+She knew that.  And it might be that very knowledge had given to
+her face its apathy and vacancy more than her low, torpid life.
+One sees that dead, vacant look steal sometimes over the rarest,
+finest of women's faces,--in the very midst, it may be, of their
+warmest summer's day; and then one can guess at the secret of
+intolerable solitude that lies hid beneath the delicate laces
+and brilliant smile.  There was no warmth, no brilliancy, no
+summer for this woman; so the stupor and vacancy had time to
+gnaw into her face perpetually.  She was young, too, though no
+one guessed it; so the gnawing was the fiercer.
+
+She lay quiet in the dark corner, listening, through the
+monotonous din and uncertain glare of the works, to the dull
+plash of the rain in the far distance, shrinking back whenever
+the man Wolfe happened to look towards her.  She knew, in spite
+of all his kindness, that there was that in her face and form
+which made him loathe the sight of her.  She felt by instinct,
+although she could not comprehend it, the finer nature of the
+man, which made him among his fellow-workmen something unique,
+set apart.  She knew, that, down under all the vileness and
+coarseness of his life, there was a groping passion for whatever
+was beautiful and pure, that his soul sickened with disgust at
+her deformity, even when his words were kindest.  Through this
+dull consciousness, which never left her, came, like a sting,
+the recollection of the dark blue eyes and lithe figure of the
+little Irish girl she had left in the cellar.  The recollection
+struck through even her stupid intellect with a vivid glow of
+beauty and of grace.  Little Janey, timid, helpless, clinging to
+Hugh as her only friend:  that was the sharp thought, the bitter
+thought, that drove into the glazed eyes a fierce light of pain.
+You laugh at it?  Are pain and jealousy less savage realities
+down here in this place I am taking you to than in your own
+house or your own heart,--your heart, which they clutch at
+sometimes?  The note is the same, I fancy, be the octave high or
+low.
+
+If you could go into this mill where Deborah lay, and drag out
+from the hearts of these men the terrible tragedy of their
+lives, taking it as a symptom of the disease of their class, no
+ghost Horror would terrify you more.  A reality of soul-
+starvation, of living death, that meets you every day under the
+besotted faces on the street,--I can paint nothing of this, only
+give you the outside outlines of a night, a crisis in the life
+of one man:  whatever muddy depth of soul-history lies beneath
+you can read according to the eyes God has given you.
+
+Wolfe, while Deborah watched him as a spaniel its master, bent
+over the furnace with his iron pole, unconscious of her
+scrutiny, only stopping to receive orders.  Physically, Nature
+had promised the man but little.  He had already lost the
+strength and instinct vigor of a man, his muscles were thin, his
+nerves weak, his face ( a meek, woman's face) haggard, yellow
+with consumption.  In the mill he was known as one of the girl-
+men:  "Molly Wolfe" was his sobriquet.  He was never seen in the
+cockpit, did not own a terrier, drank but seldom; when he did,
+desperately.  He fought sometimes, but was always thrashed,
+pommelled to a jelly.  The man was game enough, when his blood
+was up:  but he was no favorite in the mill; he had the taint of
+school-learning on him,--not to a dangerous extent, only a
+quarter or so in the free-school in fact, but enough to ruin him
+as a good hand in a fight.
+
+For other reasons, too, he was not popular.  Not one of
+themselves, they felt that, though outwardly as filthy and ash-
+covered; silent, with foreign thoughts and longings breaking out
+through his quietness in innumerable curious ways:  this one,
+for instance.  In the neighboring furnace-buildings lay great
+heaps of the refuse from the ore after the pig-metal is run.
+Korl we call it here:  a light, porous substance, of a delicate,
+waxen, flesh-colored tinge.  Out of the blocks of this korl,
+Wolfe, in his off-hours from the furnace, had a habit of
+chipping and moulding figures,--hideous, fantastic enough, but
+sometimes strangely beautiful:  even the mill-men saw that,
+while they jeered at him.  It was a curious fancy in the man,
+almost a passion.  The few hours for rest he spent hewing and
+hacking with his blunt knife, never speaking, until his watch
+came again,--working at one figure for months, and, when it was
+finished, breaking it to pieces perhaps, in a fit of
+disappointment.  A morbid, gloomy man, untaught, unled, left to
+feed his soul in grossness and crime, and hard, grinding labor.
+
+I want you to come down and look at this Wolfe, standing there
+among the lowest of his kind, and see him just as he is, that
+you may judge him justly when you hear the story of this night.
+I want you to look back, as he does every day, at his birth in
+vice, his starved infancy; to remember the heavy years he has
+groped through as boy and man,--the slow, heavy years of
+constant, hot work.  So long ago he began, that he thinks
+sometimes he has worked there for ages.  There is no hope that
+it will ever end.  Think that God put into this man's soul a
+fierce thirst for beauty,--to know it, to create it; to
+be--something, he knows not what,--other than he is.  There are
+moments when a passing cloud, the sun glinting on the purple
+thistles, a kindly smile, a child's face, will rouse him to a
+passion of pain,--when his nature starts up with a mad cry of
+rage against God, man, whoever it is that has forced this vile,
+slimy life upon him.  With all this groping, this mad desire, a
+great blind intellect stumbling through wrong, a loving poet's
+heart, the man was by habit only a coarse, vulgar laborer,
+familiar with sights and words you would blush to name.  Be
+just:  when I tell you about this night, see him as he is.  Be
+just,--not like man's law, which seizes on one isolated fact,
+but like God's judging angel, whose clear, sad eye saw all the
+countless cankering days of this man's life, all the countless
+nights, when, sick with starving, his soul fainted in him,
+before it judged him for this night, the saddest of all.
+
+I called this night the crisis of his life.  If it was, it stole
+on him unawares.  These great turning-days of life cast no
+shadow before, slip by unconsciously.  Only a trifle, a little
+turn of the rudder, and the ship goes to heaven or hell.
+
+Wolfe, while Deborah watched him, dug into the furnace of
+melting iron with his pole, dully thinking only how many rails
+the lump would yield.  It was late,--nearly Sunday morning;
+another hour, and the heavy work would be done, only the
+furnaces to replenish and cover for the next day.  The workmen
+were growing more noisy, shouting, as they had to do, to be
+heard over the deep clamor of the mills.  Suddenly they grew
+less boisterous,--at the far end, entirely silent.  Something
+unusual had happened.  After a moment, the silence came nearer;
+the men stopped their jeers and drunken choruses.  Deborah,
+stupidly lifting up her head, saw the cause of the quiet.  A
+group of five or six men were slowly approaching, stopping to
+examine each furnace as they came.  Visitors often came to see
+the mills after night:  except by growing less noisy, the men
+took no notice of them.  The furnace where Wolfe worked was near
+the bounds of the works; they halted there hot and tired:  a
+walk over one of these great foundries is no trifling task.  The
+woman, drawing out of sight, turned over to sleep.  Wolfe,
+seeing them stop, suddenly roused from his indifferent stupor,
+and watched them keenly.  He knew some of them:  the overseer,
+Clarke,--a son of Kirby, one of the mill-owners,--and a Doctor
+May, one of the town-physicians.  The other two were strangers.
+Wolfe came closer.  He seized eagerly every chance that brought
+him into contact with this mysterious class that shone down on
+him perpetually with the glamour of another order of being.
+What made the difference between them?  That was the mystery of
+his life.  He had a vague notion that perhaps to-night he could
+find it out.  One of the strangers sat down on a pile of bricks,
+and beckoned young Kirby to his side.
+
+"This is hot, with a vengeance.  A match, please?"--lighting his
+cigar.  "But the walk is worth the trouble.  If it were not that
+you must have heard it so often, Kirby, I would tell you that
+your works look like Dante's Inferno."
+
+Kirby laughed.
+
+"Yes.  Yonder is Farinata himself in the burning tomb,"--
+pointing to some figure in the shimmering shadows.
+
+"Judging from some of the faces of your men," said the other,
+"they bid fair to try the reality of Dante's vision, some day."
+
+Young Kirby looked curiously around, as if seeing the faces of
+his hands for the first time.
+
+"They're bad enough, that's true.  A desperate set, I fancy.
+Eh, Clarke?"
+
+The overseer did not hear him.  He was talking of net profits
+just then,--giving, in fact, a schedule of the annual business
+of the firm to a sharp peering little Yankee, who jotted down
+notes on a paper laid on the crown of his hat:  a reporter for
+one of the city-papers, getting up a series of reviews of the
+leading manufactories.  The other gentlemen had accompanied them
+merely for amusement.  They were silent until the notes were
+finished, drying their feet at the furnaces, and sheltering
+their faces from the intolerable heat.  At last the overseer
+concluded with--
+
+"I believe that is a pretty fair estimate, Captain."
+
+"Here, some of you men!" said Kirby, "bring up those boards.  We
+may as well sit down, gentlemen, until the rain is over.  It
+cannot last much longer at this rate."
+
+"Pig-metal,"--mumbled the reporter,--"um! coal facilities,--um!
+hands employed, twelve hundred,--bitumen,--um!--all right, I
+believe, Mr. Clarke;--sinking-fund,--what did you say was your
+sinking-fund?"
+
+"Twelve hundred hands?"  said the stranger, the young man who
+had first spoken.  "Do you control their votes, Kirby?"
+
+"Control?  No."  The young man smiled complacently.  "But my
+father brought seven hundred votes to the polls for his
+candidate last November.  No force-work, you understand,--only
+a speech or two, a hint to form themselves into a society, and
+a bit of red and blue bunting to make them a flag.  The
+Invincible Roughs,--I believe that is their name.  I forget the
+motto:  'Our country's hope,' I think."
+
+There was a laugh.  The young man talking to Kirby sat with an
+amused light in his cool gray eye, surveying critically the
+half-clothed figures of the puddlers, and the slow swing of
+their brawny muscles.  He was a stranger in the city,--spending
+a couple of months in the borders of a Slave State, to study the
+institutions of the South,--a brother-in-law of Kirby's,--
+Mitchell.  He was an amateur gymnast,--hence his anatomical eye;
+a patron, in a blase' way, of the prize-ring; a man who sucked
+the essence out of a science or philosophy in an indifferent,
+gentlemanly way; who took Kant, Novalis, Humboldt, for what they
+were worth in his own scales; accepting all, despising nothing,
+in heaven, earth, or hell, but one-idead men; with a temper
+yielding and brilliant as summer water, until his Self was
+touched, when it was ice, though brilliant still.  Such men are
+not rare in the States.
+
+As he knocked the ashes from his cigar, Wolfe caught with a
+quick pleasure the contour of the white hand, the blood-glow of
+a red ring he wore.  His voice, too, and that of Kirby's,
+touched him like music,--low, even, with chording cadences.
+About this man Mitchell hung the impalpable atmosphere belonging
+to the thoroughbred gentleman, Wolfe, scraping away the ashes
+beside him, was conscious of it, did obeisance to it with his
+artist sense, unconscious that he did so.
+
+The rain did not cease.  Clarke and the reporter left the mills;
+the others, comfortably seated near the furnace, lingered,
+smoking and talking in a desultory way.  Greek would not have
+been more unintelligible to the furnace-tenders, whose presence
+they soon forgot entirely.  Kirby drew out a newspaper from his
+pocket and read aloud some article, which they discussed
+eagerly.  At every sentence, Wolfe listened more and more like
+a dumb, hopeless animal, with a duller, more stolid look
+creeping over his face, glancing now and then at Mitchell,
+marking acutely every smallest sign of refinement, then back to
+himself, seeing as in a mirror his filthy body, his more stained
+soul.
+
+Never!  He had no words for such a thought, but he knew now, in
+all the sharpness of the bitter certainty, that between them
+there was a great gulf never to be passed.  Never!
+
+The bell of the mills rang for midnight.  Sunday morning had
+dawned.  Whatever hidden message lay in the tolling bells
+floated past these men unknown.  Yet it was there.  Veiled in
+the solemn music ushering the risen Saviour was a key-note to
+solve the darkest secrets of a world gone wrong,--even this
+social riddle which the brain of the grimy puddler grappled with
+madly to-night.
+
+The men began to withdraw the metal from the caldrons.  The
+mills were deserted on Sundays, except by the hands who fed the
+fires, and those who had no lodgings and slept usually on the
+ash-heaps.  The three strangers sat still during the next hour,
+watching the men cover the furnaces, laughing now and then at
+some jest of Kirby's.
+
+"Do you know," said Mitchell, "I like this view of the works
+better than when the glare was fiercest?  These heavy shadows
+and the amphitheatre of smothered fires are ghostly, unreal.
+One could fancy these red smouldering lights to be the half-shut
+eyes of wild beasts, and the spectral figures their victims in
+the den."
+
+Kirby laughed.  "You are fanciful.  Come, let us get out of the
+den.  The spectral figures, as you call them, are a little too
+real for me to fancy a close proximity in the darkness,--
+unarmed, too."
+
+The others rose, buttoning their overcoats, and lighting cigars.
+
+"Raining, still," said Doctor May, "and hard.  Where did we
+leave the coach, Mitchell?"
+
+"At the other side of the works.--Kirby, what's that?"
+
+Mitchell started back, half-frightened, as, suddenly turning a
+corner, the white figure of a woman faced him in the darkness,--
+a woman, white, of giant proportions, crouching on the ground,
+her arms flung out in some wild gesture of warning.
+
+"Stop!  Make that fire burn there!" cried Kirby, stopping short.
+
+The flame burst out, flashing the gaunt figure into bold relief.
+
+Mitchell drew a long breath.
+
+"I thought it was alive," he said, going up curiously.
+
+The others followed.
+
+"Not marble, eh?"  asked Kirby, touching it.
+
+One of the lower overseers stopped.
+
+"Korl, Sir."
+
+"Who did it?"
+
+"Can't say.  Some of the hands; chipped it out in off-hours."
+
+"Chipped to some purpose, I should say.  What a flesh-tint the
+stuff has!  Do you see, Mitchell?"
+
+"I see."
+
+He had stepped aside where the light fell boldest on the figure,
+looking at it in silence.  There was not one line of beauty or
+grace in it:  a nude woman's form, muscular, grown coarse with
+labor, the powerful limbs instinct with some one poignant
+longing.  One idea:  there it was in the tense, rigid muscles,
+the clutching hands, the wild, eager face, like that of a
+starving wolf's.  Kirby and Doctor May walked around it,
+critical, curious.  Mitchell stood aloof, silent.  The figure
+touched him strangely.
+
+"Not badly done," said Doctor May, "Where did the fellow learn
+that sweep of the muscles in the arm and hand?  Look at them!
+They are groping,do you see?--clutching:  the peculiar action of
+a man dying of thirst."
+
+"They have ample facilities for studying anatomy," sneered
+Kirby, glancing at the half-naked figures.
+
+"Look," continued the Doctor, "at this bony wrist, and the
+strained sinews of the instep!  A working-woman,--the very type
+of her class."
+
+"God forbid!" muttered Mitchell.
+
+"Why?"  demanded May, "What does the fellow intend by the
+figure?  I cannot catch the meaning."
+
+"Ask him," said the other, dryly, "There he stands,"--pointing
+to Wolfe, who stood with a group of men, leaning on his ash-
+rake.
+
+The Doctor beckoned him with the affable smile which kind-
+hearted men put on, when talking to these people.
+
+"Mr. Mitchell has picked you out as the man who did this,--I'm
+sure I don't know why.  But what did you mean by it?"
+
+"She be hungry."
+
+Wolfe's eyes answered Mitchell, not the Doctor.
+
+"Oh-h!  But what a mistake you have made, my fine fellow!  You
+have given no sign of starvation to the body.  It is strong,--
+terribly strong.  It has the mad, half-despairing gesture of
+drowning."
+
+Wolfe stammered, glanced appealingly at Mitchell, who saw the
+soul of the thing, he knew.  But the cool, probing eyes were
+turned on himself now,--mocking, cruel, relentless.
+
+"Not hungry for meat," the furnace-tender said at last.
+
+"What then?  Whiskey?"  jeered Kirby, with a coarse laugh.
+
+Wolfe was silent a moment, thinking.
+
+"I dunno," he said, with a bewildered look.  "It mebbe.  Summat
+to make her live, I think,--like you.  Whiskey ull do it, in a
+way.
+
+The young man laughed again.  Mitchell flashed a look of disgust
+somewhere,--not at Wolfe.
+
+"May," he broke out impatiently, "are you blind?  Look at that
+woman's face!  It asks questions of God, and says, 'I have a
+right to know,' Good God, how hungry it is!"
+
+They looked a moment; then May turned to the mill-owner:--
+
+"Have you many such hands as this?  What are you going to do
+with them?  Keep them at puddling iron?"
+
+Kirby shrugged his shoulders.  Mitchell's look had irritated
+him.
+
+"Ce n'est pas mon affaire.  I have no fancy for nursing infant
+geniuses.  I suppose there are some stray gleams of mind and
+soul among these wretches.  The Lord will take care of his own;
+or else they can work out their own salvation.  I have heard you
+call our American system a ladder which any man can scale.  Do
+you doubt it?  Or perhaps you want to banish all social ladders,
+and put us all on a flat table-land,--eh, May?"
+
+The Doctor looked vexed, puzzled.  Some terrible problem lay hid
+in this woman's face, and troubled these men.  Kirby waited for
+an answer, and, receiving none, went on, warming with his
+subject.
+
+"I tell you, there's something wrong that no talk of 'Liberte'
+or 'Egalite' will do away.  If I had the making of men, these
+men who do the lowest part of the world's work should be
+machines,--nothing more,--hands.  It would be kindness.  God
+help them!  What are taste, reason, to creatures who must live
+such lives as that?"  He pointed to Deborah, sleeping on the
+ash-heap.  "So many nerves to sting them to pain.  What if God
+had put your brain, with all its agony of touch, into your
+fingers, and bid you work and strike with that?"
+
+"You think you could govern the world better?"  laughed the
+Doctor.
+
+"I do not think at all."
+
+"That is true philosophy.  Drift with the stream, because you
+cannot dive deep enough to find bottom, eh?"
+
+"Exactly," rejoined Kirby.  "I do not think.  I wash my hands of
+all social problems,--slavery, caste, white or black.  My duty
+to my operatives has a narrow limit,--the pay-hour on Saturday
+night.  Outside of that, if they cut korl, or cut each other's
+throats, (the more popular amusement of the two,) I am not
+responsible."
+
+The Doctor sighed,--a good honest sigh, from the depths of his
+stomach.
+
+"God help us!  Who is responsible?"
+
+"Not I, I tell you," said Kirby, testily.  "What has the man who
+pays them money to do with their souls' concerns, more than the
+grocer or butcher who takes it?"
+
+"And yet," said Mitchell's cynical voice, "look at her!  How
+hungry she is!"
+
+Kirby tapped his boot with his cane.  No one spoke.  Only the
+dumb face of the rough image looking into their faces with the
+awful question, "What shall we do to be saved?"  Only Wolfe's
+face, with its heavy weight of brain, its weak, uncertain mouth,
+its desperate eyes, out of which looked the soul of his class,--
+only Wolfe's face turned towards Kirby's.  Mitchell laughed,--a
+cool, musical laugh.
+
+"Money has spoken!" he said, seating himself lightly on a stone
+with the air of an amused spectator at a play.  "Are you
+answered?"--turning to Wolfe his clear, magnetic face.
+
+Bright and deep and cold as Arctic air, the soul of the man lay
+tranquil beneath.  He looked at the furnace-tender as he had
+looked at a rare mosaic in the morning; only the man was the
+more amusing study of the two.
+
+"Are you answered?  Why, May, look at him!  'De profundis
+clamavi.'  Or, to quote in English, 'Hungry and thirsty, his
+soul faints in him.'  And so Money sends back its answer into
+the depths through you, Kirby!  Very clear the answer, too!--I
+think I remember reading the same words somewhere:  washing your
+hands in Eau de Cologne, and saying, 'I am innocent of the blood
+of this man.  See ye to it!'"
+
+Kirby flushed angrily.
+
+"You quote Scripture freely."
+
+"Do I not quote correctly?  I think I remember another line,
+which may amend my meaning?  'Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of
+the least of these, ye did it unto me.'  Deist?  Bless you, man,
+I was raised on the milk of the Word.  Now, Doctor, the pocket
+of the world having uttered its voice, what has the heart to
+say?  You are a philanthropist, in a small Way,--n'est ce pas?
+Here, boy, this gentleman can show you how to cut korl better,--
+or your destiny.  Go on, May!"
+
+"I think a mocking devil possesses you to-night," rejoined the
+Doctor, seriously.
+
+He went to Wolfe and put his hand kindly on his arm.  Something
+of a vague idea possessed the Doctor's brain that much good was
+to be done here by a friendly word or two:  a latent genius to
+be warmed into life by a waited-for sunbeam.  Here it was:  he
+had brought it.  So he went on complacently:
+
+"Do you know, boy, you have it in you to be a great sculptor, a
+great man?do you understand?"  (talking down to the capacity of
+his hearer:  it is a way people have with children, and men like
+Wolfe,)--"to live a better, stronger life than I, or Mr. Kirby
+here?  A man may make himself anything he chooses.  God has
+given you stronger powers than many men,--me, for instance."
+
+May stopped, heated, glowing with his own magnanimity.  And it
+was magnanimous.  The puddler had drunk in every word, looking
+through the Doctor's flurry, and generous heat, and self-
+approval, into his will, with those slow, absorbing eyes of his.
+
+"Make yourself what you will.  It is your right.
+
+"I know," quietly.  "Will you help me?"
+
+Mitchell laughed again.  The Doctor turned now, in a passion,--
+
+"You know, Mitchell, I have not the means.  You know, if I had,
+it is in my heart to take this boy and educate him for"--
+
+"The glory of God, and the glory of John May."
+
+May did not speak for a moment; then, controlled, he said,--
+
+"Why should one be raised, when myriads are left?--I have not
+the money, boy," to Wolfe, shortly.
+
+"Money?"  He said it over slowly, as one repeats the guessed
+answer to a riddle, doubtfully.  "That is it?  Money?"
+
+"Yes, money,--that is it," said Mitchell, rising, and drawing
+his furred coat about him.  "You've found the cure for all the
+world's diseases.--Come, May, find your good-humor, and come
+home.  This damp wind chills my very bones.  Come and preach
+your Saint-Simonian doctrines' to-morrow to Kirby's hands.  Let
+them have a clear idea of the rights of the soul, and I'll
+venture next week they'll strike for higher wages.  That will be
+the end of it."
+
+"Will you send the coach-driver to this side of the mills?"
+asked Kirby, turning to Wolfe.
+
+He spoke kindly:  it was his habit to do so.  Deborah, seeing
+the puddler go, crept after him.  The three men waited outside.
+Doctor May walked up and down, chafed.  Suddenly he stopped.
+
+"Go back, Mitchell!  You say the pocket and the heart of the
+world speak without meaning to these people.  What has its head
+to say?  Taste, culture, refinement?  Go!"
+
+Mitchell was leaning against a brick wall.  He turned his head
+indolently, and looked into the mills.  There hung about the
+place a thick, unclean odor.  The slightest motion of his hand
+marked that he perceived it, and his insufferable disgust.  That
+was all.  May said nothing, only quickened his angry tramp.
+
+"Besides," added Mitchell, giving a corollary to his answer, "it
+would be of no use.  I am not one of them."
+
+"You do not mean"--said May, facing him.
+
+"Yes, I mean just that.  Reform is born of need, not pity.  No
+vital movement of the people's has worked down, for good or
+evil; fermented, instead, carried up the heaving, cloggy mass.
+Think back through history, and you will know it.  What will
+this lowest deep--thieves, Magdalens, negroes--do with the light
+filtered through ponderous Church creeds, Baconian theories,
+Goethe schemes?  Some day, out of their bitter need will be
+thrown up their own light-bringer,--their Jean Paul, their
+Cromwell, their Messiah."
+
+"Bah!" was the Doctor's inward criticism.  However, in practice,
+he adopted the theory; for, when, night and morning, afterwards,
+he prayed that power might be given these degraded souls to
+rise, he glowed at heart, recognizing an accomplished duty.
+
+Wolfe and the woman had stood in the shadow of the works as the
+coach drove off.  The Doctor had held out his hand in a frank,
+generous way, telling him to "take care of himself, and to
+remember it was his right to rise."  Mitchell had simply touched
+his hat, as to an equal, with a quiet look of thorough
+recognition.  Kirby had thrown Deborah some money, which she
+found, and clutched eagerly enough.  They were gone now, all of
+them.  The man sat down on the cinder-road, looking up into the
+murky sky.
+
+"'T be late, Hugh.  Wunnot hur come?"
+
+He shook his head doggedly, and the woman crouched out of his
+sight against the wall.  Do you remember rare moments when a
+sudden light flashed over yourself, your world, God?  when you
+stood on a mountain-peak, seeing your life as it might have
+been, as it is?  one quick instant, when custom lost its force
+and every-day usage?  when your friend, wife, brother, stood in
+a new light?  your soul was bared, and the grave,--a foretaste
+of the nakedness of the Judgment-Day?  So it came before him,
+his life, that night.  The slow tides of pain he had borne
+gathered themselves up and surged against his soul.  His squalid
+daily life, the brutal coarseness eating into his brain, as the
+ashes into his skin:  before, these things had been a dull
+aching into his consciousness; to-night, they were reality.  He
+griped the filthy red shirt that clung, stiff with soot, about
+him, and tore it savagely from his arm.  The flesh beneath was
+muddy with grease and ashes,--and the heart beneath that!  And
+the soul?  God knows.
+
+Then flashed before his vivid poetic sense the man who had left
+him,--the pure face, the delicate, sinewy limbs, in harmony with
+all he knew of beauty or truth.  In his cloudy fancy he had
+pictured a Something like this.  He had found it in this
+Mitchell, even when he idly scoffed at his pain:  a Man all-
+knowing, all-seeing, crowned by Nature, reigning,--the keen
+glance of his eye falling like a sceptre on other men.  And yet
+his instinct taught him that he too--He!  He looked at himself
+with sudden loathing, sick, wrung his hands With a cry, and then
+was silent.  With all the phantoms of his heated, ignorant
+fancy, Wolfe had not been vague in his ambitions.  They were
+practical, slowly built up before him out of his knowledge of
+what he could do.  Through years he had day by day made this
+hope a real thing to himself,--a clear, projected figure of
+himself, as he might become.
+
+Able to speak, to know what was best, to raise these men and
+women working at his side up with him:  sometimes he forgot this
+defined hope in the frantic anguish to escape, only to escape,--
+out of the wet, the pain, the ashes, somewhere, anywhere,--only
+for one moment of free air on a hill-side, to lie down and let
+his sick soul throb itself out in the sunshine.  But to-night he
+panted for life.  The savage strength of his nature was roused;
+his cry was fierce to God for justice.
+
+"Look at me!" he said to Deborah, with a low, bitter laugh,
+striking his puny chest savagely.  "What am I worth, Deb?  Is it
+my fault that I am no better?  My fault?  My fault?"
+
+He stopped, stung with a sudden remorse, seeing her hunchback
+shape writhing with sobs.  For Deborah was crying thankless
+tears, according to the fashion of women.
+
+"God forgi' me, woman!  Things go harder Wi' you nor me.  It's
+a worse share."
+
+He got up and helped her to rise; and they went doggedly down
+the muddy street, side by side.
+
+"It's all wrong," he muttered, slowly,--"all wrong!  I dunnot
+understan'.  But it'll end some day."
+
+"Come home, Hugh!" she said, coaxingly; for he had stopped,
+looking around bewildered.
+
+"Home,--and back to the mill!"  He went on saying this over to
+himself, as if he would mutter down every pain in this dull
+despair.
+
+She followed him through the fog, her blue lips chattering with
+cold.  They reached the cellar at last.  Old Wolfe had been
+drinking since she went out, and had crept nearer the door.  The
+girl Janey slept heavily in the corner.  He went up to her,
+touching softly the worn white arm with his fingers.  Some
+bitterer thought stung him, as he stood there.  He wiped the
+drops from his forehead, and went into the room beyond, livid,
+trembling.  A hope, trifling, perhaps, but very dear, had died
+just then out of the poor puddler's life, as he looked at the
+sleeping, innocent girl,--some plan for the future, in which she
+had borne a part.  He gave it up that moment, then and forever.
+Only a trifle, perhaps, to us:  his face grew a shade paler,--
+that was all.  But, somehow, the man's soul, as God and the
+angels looked down on it, never was the same afterwards.
+
+Deborah followed him into the inner room.  She carried a candle,
+which she placed on the floor, closing the door after her.  She
+had seen the look on his face, as he turned away:  her own grew
+deadly.  Yet, as she came up to him, her eyes glowed.  He was
+seated on an old chest, quiet, holding his face in his hands.
+
+"Hugh!" she said, softly.
+
+He did not speak.
+
+"Hugh, did hur hear what the man said,--him with the clear
+voice?  Did hur hear?  Money, money,--that it wud do all?"
+
+He pushed her away,--gently, but he was worn out; her rasping
+tone fretted him.
+
+"Hugh!"
+
+The candle flared a pale yellow light over the cobwebbed brick
+walls, and the woman standing there.  He looked at her.  She was
+young, in deadly earnest; her faded eyes, and wet, ragged figure
+caught from their frantic eagerness a power akin to beauty.
+
+"Hugh, it is true!  Money ull do it!  Oh, Hugh, boy, listen till
+me!  He said it true!  It is money!"
+
+"I know.  Go back!  I do not want you here."
+
+"Hugh, it is t' last time.  I'll never worrit hur again."
+
+There were tears in her voice now, but she choked them back:
+
+"Hear till me only to-night!  If one of t' witch people wud
+come, them we heard oft' home, and gif hur all hur wants, what
+then?  Say, Hugh!"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean money.
+
+Her whisper shrilled through his brain.
+
+"If one oft' witch dwarfs wud come from t' lane moors to-night,
+and gif hur money, to go out,--OUT, I say,--out, lad, where t'
+sun shines, and t' heath grows, and t' ladies walk in silken
+gownds, and God stays all t' time,--where t'man lives that
+talked to us to-night, Hugh knows,--Hugh could walk there like
+a king!"
+
+He thought the woman mad, tried to check her, but she went on,
+fierce in her eager haste.
+
+"If I were t' witch dwarf, if I had t' money, wud hur thank me?
+Wud hur take me out o' this place wid hur and Janey?  I wud not
+come into the gran' house hur wud build, to vex hur wid t'
+hunch,--only at night, when t' shadows were dark, stand far off
+to see hur."
+
+Mad?  Yes!  Are many of us mad in this way?
+
+"Poor Deb! poor Deb!" he said, soothingly.
+
+"It is here," she said, suddenly, jerking into his hand a small
+roll.  "I took it!  I did it!  Me, me!--not hur!  I shall be
+hanged, I shall be burnt in hell, if anybody knows I took it!
+Out of his pocket, as he leaned against t' bricks.  Hur knows?"
+
+She thrust it into his hand, and then, her errand done, began to
+gather chips together to make a fire, choking down hysteric
+sobs.
+
+"Has it come to this?"
+
+That was all he said.  The Welsh Wolfe blood was honest.  The
+roll was a small green pocket-book containing one or two gold
+pieces, and a check for an incredible amount, as it seemed to
+the poor puddler.  He laid it down, hiding his face again in his
+hands.
+
+"Hugh, don't be angry wud me!  It's only poor Deb,--hur knows?"
+
+He took the long skinny fingers kindly in his.
+
+"Angry?  God help me, no!  Let me sleep.  I am tired."
+
+He threw himself heavily down on the wooden bench, stunned with
+pain and weariness.  She brought some old rags to cover him.
+
+It was late on Sunday evening before he awoke.  I tell God's
+truth, when I say he had then no thought of keeping this money.
+Deborah had hid it in his pocket.  He found it there.  She
+watched him eagerly, as he took it out.
+
+"I must gif it to him," he said, reading her face.
+
+"Hur knows," she said with a bitter sigh of disappointment.
+"But it is hur right to keep it."
+
+His right!  The word struck him.  Doctor May had used the same.
+He washed himself, and went out to find this man Mitchell.  His
+right!  Why did this chance word cling to him so obstinately?
+Do you hear the fierce devils whisper in his ear, as he went
+slowly down the darkening street?
+
+The evening came on, slow and calm.  He seated himself at the
+end of an alley leading into one of the larger streets.  His
+brain was clear to-night, keen, intent, mastering.  It would not
+start back, cowardly, from any hellish temptation, but meet it
+face to face.  Therefore the great temptation of his life came
+to him veiled by no sophistry, but bold, defiant, owning its own
+vile name, trusting to one bold blow for victory.
+
+He did not deceive himself.  Theft!  That was it.  At first the
+word sickened him; then he grappled with it.  Sitting there on
+a broken cart-wheel, the fading day, the noisy groups, the
+church-bells' tolling passed before him like a panorama, while
+the sharp struggle went on within.  This money!  He took it out,
+and looked at it.  If he gave it back, what then?  He was going
+to be cool about it.
+
+People going by to church saw only a sickly mill-boy watching
+them quietly at the alley's mouth.  They did not know that he
+was mad, or they would not have gone by so quietly:  mad with
+hunger; stretching out his hands to the world, that had given so
+much to them, for leave to live the life God meant him to live.
+His soul within him was smothering to death; he wanted so much,
+thought so much, and knew--nothing.  There was nothing of which
+he was certain, except the mill and things there.  Of God and
+heaven he had heard so little, that they were to him what fairy-
+land is to a child:  something real, but not here; very far off.
+His brain, greedy, dwarfed, full of thwarted energy and unused
+powers, questioned these men and women going by, coldly,
+bitterly, that night.  Was it not his right to live as they,--a
+pure life, a good, true-hearted life, full of beauty and kind
+words?  He only wanted to know how to use the strength within
+him.  His heart warmed, as he thought of it.  He suffered
+himself to think of it longer.  If he took the money?
+
+Then he saw himself as he might be, strong, helpful, kindly.
+The night crept on, as this one image slowly evolved itself from
+the crowd of other thoughts and stood triumphant.  He looked at
+it.  As he might be!  What wonder, if it blinded him to
+delirium,--the madness that underlies all revolution, all
+progress, and all fall?
+
+You laugh at the shallow temptation?  You see the error
+underlying its argument so clearly,--that to him a true life was
+one of full development rather than self-restraint?  that he was
+deaf to the higher tone in a cry of voluntary suffering for
+truth's sake than in the fullest flow of spontaneous harmony?
+I do not plead his cause.  I only want to show you the mote in
+my brother's eye:  then you can see clearly to take it out.
+
+The money,--there it lay on his knee, a little blotted slip of
+paper, nothing in itself; used to raise him out of the pit,
+something straight from God's hand.  A thief!  Well, what was it
+to be a thief?  He met the question at last, face to face,
+wiping the clammy drops of sweat from his forehead.  God made
+this money--the fresh air, too--for his children's use.  He
+never made the difference between poor and rich.  The Something
+who looked down on him that moment through the cool gray sky had
+a kindly face, he knew,--loved his children alike.  Oh, he knew
+that!
+
+There were times when the soft floods of color in the crimson
+and purple flames, or the clear depth of amber in the water
+below the bridge, had somehow given him a glimpse of another
+world than this,--of an infinite depth of beauty and of quiet
+somewhere,--somewhere, a depth of quiet and rest and love.
+Looking up now, it became strangely real.  The sun had sunk
+quite below the hills, but his last rays struck upward, touching
+the zenith.  The fog had risen, and the town and river were
+steeped in its thick, gray damp; but overhead, the sun-touched
+smoke-clouds opened like a cleft ocean,--shifting, rolling seas
+of crimson mist, waves of billowy silver veined with blood-
+scarlet, inner depths unfathomable of glancing light.  Wolfe's
+artist-eye grew drunk with color.  The gates of that other
+world!  Fading, flashing before him now!  What, in that world of
+Beauty, Content, and Right, were the petty laws, the mine and
+thine, of mill-owners and mill hands?
+
+A consciousness of power stirred within him.  He stood up.  A
+man,--he thought, stretching out his hands,--free to work, to
+live, to love!  Free!  His right!  He folded the scrap of paper
+in his hand.  As his nervous fingers took it in, limp and
+blotted, so his soul took in the mean temptation, lapped it in
+fancied rights, in dreams of improved existences, drifting and
+endless as the cloud-seas of color.  Clutching it, as if the
+tightness of his hold would strengthen his sense of possession,
+he went aimlessly down the street.  It was his watch at the
+mill.  He need not go, need never go again, thank God!--shaking
+off the thought with unspeakable loathing.
+
+Shall I go over the history of the hours of that night?  how the
+man wandered from one to another of his old haunts, with a half-
+consciousness of bidding them farewell,--lanes and alleys and
+back-yards where the mill-hands lodged,--noting, with a new
+eagerness, the filth and drunkenness, the pig-pens, the ash-
+heaps covered with potato-skins, the bloated, pimpled women at
+the doors, with a new disgust, a new sense of sudden triumph,
+and, under all, a new, vague dread, unknown before, smothered
+down, kept under, but still there?  It left him but once during
+the night, when, for the second time in his life, he entered a
+church.  It was a sombre Gothic pile, where the stained light
+lost itself in far-retreating arches; built to meet the
+requirements and sympathies of a far other class than Wolfe's.
+Yet it touched, moved him uncontrollably.  The distances, the
+shadows, the still, marble figures, the mass of silent kneeling
+worshippers, the mysterious music, thrilled, lifted his soul
+with a wonderful pain.  Wolfe forgot himself, forgot the new
+life he was going to live, the mean terror gnawing underneath.
+The voice of the speaker strengthened the charm; it was clear,
+feeling, full, strong.  An old man, who had lived much, suffered
+much; whose brain was keenly alive, dominant; whose heart was
+summer-warm with charity.  He taught it to-night.  He held up
+Humanity in its grand total; showed the great world-cancer to
+his people.  Who could show it better?  He was a Christian
+reformer; he had studied the age thoroughly; his outlook at man
+had been free, world-wide, over all time.  His faith stood
+sublime upon the Rock of Ages; his fiery zeal guided vast
+schemes by which the Gospel was to be preached to all nations.
+How did he preach it to-night?  In burning, light-laden words he
+painted Jesus, the incarnate Life, Love, the universal Man:
+words that became reality in the lives of these people,--that
+lived again in beautiful words and actions, trifling, but
+heroic.  Sin, as he defined it, was a real foe to them; their
+trials, temptations, were his.  His words passed far over the
+furnace-tender's grasp, toned to suit another class of culture;
+they sounded in his ears a very pleasant song in an unknown
+tongue.  He meant to cure this world-cancer with a steady eye
+that had never glared with hunger, and a hand that neither
+poverty nor strychnine-whiskey had taught to shake.  In this
+morbid, distorted heart of the Welsh puddler he had failed.
+
+Eighteen centuries ago, the Master of this man tried reform in
+the streets of a city as crowded and vile as this, and did not
+fail.  His disciple, showing Him to-night to cultured hearers,
+showing the clearness of the God-power acting through Him,
+shrank back from one coarse fact; that in birth and habit the
+man Christ was thrown up from the lowest of the people:  his
+flesh, their flesh; their blood, his blood; tempted like them,
+to brutalize day by day; to lie, to steal:  the actual slime and
+want of their hourly life, and the wine-press he trod alone.
+
+Yet, is there no meaning in this perpetually covered truth?  If
+the son of the carpenter had stood in the church that night, as
+he stood with the fishermen and harlots by the sea of Galilee,
+before His Father and their Father, despised and rejected of
+men, without a place to lay His head, wounded for their
+iniquities, bruised for their transgressions, would not that
+hungry mill-boy at least, in the back seat, have "known the
+man"?  That Jesus did not stand there.
+
+Wolfe rose at last, and turned from the church down the street.
+He looked up; the night had come on foggy, damp; the golden
+mists had vanished, and the sky lay dull and ash-colored.  He
+wandered again aimlessly down the street, idly wondering what
+had become of the cloud-sea of crimson and scarlet.  The trial-
+day of this man's life was over, and he had lost the victory.
+What followed was mere drifting circumstance,--a quicker walking
+over the path,--that was all.  Do you want to hear the end of
+it?  You wish me to make a tragic story out of it?  Why, in the
+police-reports of the morning paper you can find a dozen such
+tragedies:  hints of shipwrecks unlike any that ever befell on
+the high seas; hints that here a power was lost to heaven,--that
+there a soul went down where no tide can ebb or flow.
+Commonplace enough the hints are,--jocose sometimes, done up in
+rhyme.
+
+Doctor May a month after the night I have told you of, was
+reading to his wife at breakfast from this fourth column of the
+morning-paper:  an unusual thing,--these police-reports not
+being, in general, choice reading for ladies; but it was only
+one item he read.
+
+"Oh, my dear!  You remember that man I told you of, that we saw
+at Kirby's mill?--that was arrested for robbing Mitchell?  Here
+he is; just listen:--'Circuit Court.  Judge Day.  Hugh Wolfe,
+operative in Kirby & John's Loudon Mills.  Charge, grand
+larceny.  Sentence, nineteen years hard labor in penitentiary.
+Scoundrel!  Serves him right!  After all our kindness that
+night!  Picking Mitchell's pocket at the very time!"
+
+His wife said something about the ingratitude of that kind of
+people, and then they began to talk of something else.
+
+Nineteen years!  How easy that was to read!  What a simple word
+for Judge Day to utter!  Nineteen years!  Half a lifetime!
+
+Hugh Wolfe sat on the window-ledge of his cell, looking out.
+His ankles Were ironed.  Not usual in such cases; but he had
+made two desperate efforts to escape.  "Well," as Haley, the
+jailer, said, "small blame to him!  Nineteen years' inprisonment
+was not a pleasant thing to look forward to."  Haley was very
+good-natured about it, though Wolfe had fought him savagely.
+
+"When he was first caught," the jailer said afterwards, in
+telling the story, "before the trial, the fellow was cut down at
+once,--laid there on that pallet like a dead man, with his hands
+over his eyes.  Never saw a man so cut down in my life.  Time of
+the trial, too, came the queerest dodge of any customer I ever
+had.  Would choose no lawyer.  Judge gave him one, of course.
+Gibson it Was.  He tried to prove the fellow crazy; but it
+wouldn't go.  Thing was plain as daylight:  money found on him.
+'T was a hard sentence,--all the law allows; but it was for
+'xample's sake.  These mill-hands are gettin' onbearable.  When
+the sentence was read, he just looked up, and said the money was
+his by rights, and that all the world had gone wrong.  That
+night, after the trial, a gentleman came to see him here, name
+of Mitchell,--him as he stole from.  Talked to him for an hour.
+Thought he came for curiosity, like.  After he was gone, thought
+Wolfe was remarkable quiet, and went into his cell.  Found him
+very low; bed all bloody.  Doctor said he had been bleeding at
+the lungs.  He was as weak as a cat; yet if ye'll b'lieve me, he
+tried to get a-past me and get out.  I just carried him like a
+baby, and threw him on the pallet.  Three days after, he tried
+it again:  that time reached the wall.  Lord help you! he fought
+like a tiger,--giv' some terrible blows.  Fightin' for life, you
+see; for he can't live long, shut up in the stone crib down
+yonder.  Got a death-cough now.  'T took two of us to bring him
+down that day; so I just put the irons on his feet.  There he
+sits, in there.  Goin' to-morrow, with a batch more of 'em.
+That woman, hunchback, tried with him,--you remember?--she's
+only got three years.  'Complice.  But she's a woman, you know.
+He's been quiet ever since I put on irons:  giv' up, I suppose.
+Looks white, sick-lookin'.  It acts different on 'em, bein'
+sentenced.  Most of 'em gets reckless, devilish-like.  Some
+prays awful, and sings them vile songs of the mills, all in a
+breath.  That woman, now, she's desper't'.  Been beggin' to see
+Hugh, as she calls him, for three days.  I'm a-goin' to let her
+in.  She don't go with him.  Here she is in this next cell.  I'm
+a-goin' now to let her in."
+
+He let her in.  Wolfe did not see her.  She crept into a corner
+of the cell, and stood watching him.  He was scratching the iron
+bars of the window with a piece of tin which he had picked up,
+with an idle, uncertain, vacant stare, just as a child or idiot
+would do.
+
+"Tryin' to get out, old boy?"  laughed Haley.  "Them irons will
+need a crow-bar beside your tin, before you can open 'em."
+
+Wolfe laughed, too, in a senseless way.
+
+"I think I'll get out," he said.
+
+"I believe his brain's touched," said Haley, when he came out.
+
+The puddler scraped away with the tin for half an hour.  Still
+Deborah did not speak.  At last she ventured nearer, and touched
+his arm.
+
+"Blood?"  she said, looking at some spots on his coat with a
+shudder.
+
+He looked up at her, "Why, Deb!" he said, smiling,--such a
+bright, boyish smile, that it Went to poor Deborah's heart
+directly, and she sobbed and cried out loud.
+
+"Oh, Hugh, lad!  Hugh! dunnot look at me, when it wur my fault!
+To think I brought hur to it!  And I loved hur so!  Oh lad, I
+dud!"
+
+The confession, even In this wretch, came with the woman's blush
+through the sharp cry.
+
+He did not seem to hear her,--scraping away diligently at the
+bars with the bit of tin.
+
+Was he going mad?  She peered closely into his face.  Something
+she saw there made her draw suddenly back,--something which
+Haley had not seen, that lay beneath the pinched, vacant look it
+had caught since the trial, or the curious gray shadow that
+rested on it.  That gray shadow,--yes, she knew what that meant.
+She had often seen it creeping over women's faces for months,
+who died at last of slow hunger or consumption.  That meant
+death, distant, lingering:  but this--Whatever it was the woman
+saw, or thought she saw, used as she was to crime and misery,
+seemed to make her sick with a new horror.  Forgetting her fear
+of him, she caught his shoulders, and looked keenly, steadily,
+into his eyes.
+
+"Hugh!" she cried, in a desperate whisper,--"oh, boy, not that!
+for God's sake, not that!"
+
+The vacant laugh went off his face, and he answered her in a
+muttered word or two that drove her away.  Yet the words were
+kindly enough.  Sitting there on his pallet, she cried silently
+a hopeless sort of tears, but did not speak again.  The man
+looked up furtively at her now and then.  Whatever his own
+trouble was, her distress vexed him with a momentary sting.
+
+It was market-day.  The narrow window of the jail looked down
+directly on the carts and wagons drawn up in a long line, where
+they had unloaded.  He could see, too, and hear distinctly the
+clink of money as it changed hands, the busy crowd of whites and
+blacks shoving, pushing one another, and the chaffering and
+swearing at the stalls.  Somehow, the sound, more than anything
+else had done, wakened him up,--made the whole real to him.  He
+was done with the world and the business of it.  He let the tin
+fall, and looked out, pressing his face close to the rusty bars.
+How they crowded and pushed!  And he,--he should never walk that
+pavement again!  There came Neff Sanders, one of the feeders at
+the mill, with a basket on his arm.  Sure enough, Nyeff was
+married the other week.  He whistled, hoping he would look up;
+but he did not.  He wondered if Neff remembered he was there,--
+if any of the boys thought of him up there, and thought that he
+never was to go down that old cinder-road again.  Never again!
+He had not quite understood it before; but now he did.  Not for
+days or years, but never!--that was it.
+
+How clear the light fell on that stall in front of the market!
+and how like a picture it was, the dark-green heaps of corn, and
+the crimson beets, and golden melons!  There was another with
+game:  how the light flickered on that pheasant's breast, with
+the purplish blood dripping over the brown feathers!  He could
+see the red shining of the drops, it was so near.  In one minute
+he could be down there.  It was just a step.  So easy, as it
+seemed, so natural to go!  Yet it could never be--not in all the
+thousands of years to come--that he should put his foot on that
+street again!  He thought of himself with a sorrowful pity, as
+of some one else.  There was a dog down in the market, walking
+after his master with such a stately, grave look!--only a dog,
+yet he could go backwards and forwards just as he pleased:  he
+had good luck!  Why, the very vilest cur, yelping there in the
+gutter, had not lived his life, had been free to act out
+whatever thought God had put into his brain; while he--No, he
+would not think of that!  He tried to put the thought away, and
+to listen to a dispute between a countryman and a woman about
+some meat; but it would come back.  He, what had he done to bear
+this?
+
+Then came the sudden picture of what might have been, and now.
+He knew what it was to be in the penitentiary, how it went with
+men there.  He knew how in these long years he should slowly
+die, but not until soul and body had become corrupt and
+rotten,--how, when he came out, if he lived to come, even the
+lowest of the mill-hands would jeer him,--how his hands would be
+weak, and his brain senseless and stupid.  He believed he was
+almost that now.  He put his hand to his head, with a puzzled,
+weary look.  It ached, his head, with thinking.  He tried to
+quiet himself.  It was only right, perhaps; he had done wrong.
+But was there right or wrong for such as he?  What was right?
+And who had ever taught him?  He thrust the whole matter away.
+A dark, cold quiet crept through his brain.  It was all wrong;
+but let it be!  It was nothing to him more than the others.  Let
+it be!
+
+The door grated, as Haley opened it.
+
+"Come, my woman!  Must lock up for t' night.  Come, stir
+yerself!"
+
+She went up and took Hugh's hand.
+
+"Good-night, Deb," he said, carelessly.
+
+She had not hoped he would say more; but the tired pain on her
+mouth just then was bitterer than death.  She took his passive
+hand and kissed it.
+
+"Hur'll never see Deb again!" she ventured, her lips growing
+colder and more bloodless.
+
+What did she say that for?  Did he not know it?  Yet he would
+not be impatient with poor old Deb.  She had trouble of her own,
+as well as he.
+
+"No, never again," he said, trying to be cheerful.
+
+She stood just a moment, looking at him.  Do you laugh at her,
+standing there, with her hunchback, her rags, her bleared,
+withered face, and the great despised love tugging at her heart?
+
+"Come, you!" called Haley, impatiently.
+
+She did not move.
+
+"Hugh!" she whispered.
+
+It was to be her last word.  What was it?
+
+"Hugh, boy, not THAT!"
+
+He did not answer.  She wrung her hands, trying to be silent,
+looking in his face in an agony of entreaty.  He smiled again,
+kindly.
+
+"It is best, Deb.  I cannot bear to be hurted any more.
+
+"Hur knows," she said, humbly.
+
+"Tell my father good-bye; and--and kiss little Janey."
+
+She nodded, saying nothing, looked in his face again, and went
+out of the door.  As she went, she staggered.
+
+"Drinkin' to-day?"  broke out Haley, pushing her before him.
+"Where the Devil did you get it?  Here, in with ye!" and he
+shoved her into her cell, next to Wolfe's, and shut the door.
+
+Along the wall of her cell there was a crack low down by the
+floor, through which she could see the light from Wolfe's.  She
+had discovered it days before.  She hurried in now, and,
+kneeling down by it, listened, hoping to hear some sound.
+Nothing but the rasping of the tin on the bars.  He was at his
+old amusement again.  Something in the noise jarred on her ear,
+for she shivered as she heard it.  Hugh rasped away at the bars.
+A dull old bit of tin, not fit to cut korl with.
+
+He looked out of the window again.  People were leaving the
+market now.  A tall mulatto girl, following her mistress, her
+basket on her head, crossed the street just below, and looked
+up.  She was laughing; but, when she caught sight of the haggard
+face peering out through the bars, suddenly grew grave, and
+hurried by.  A free, firm step, a clear-cut olive face, with a
+scarlet turban tied on one side, dark, shining eyes, and on the
+head the basket poised, filled with fruit and flowers, under
+which the scarlet turban and bright eyes looked out half-
+shadowed.  The picture caught his eye.  It was good to see a
+face like that.  He would try to-morrow, and cut one like it.
+To-morrow!  He threw down the tin, trembling, and covered his
+face with his hands.  When he looked up again, the daylight was
+gone.
+
+Deborah, crouching near by on the other side of the wall, heard
+no noise.  He sat on the side of the low pallet, thinking.
+Whatever was the mystery which the woman had seen on his face,
+it came out now slowly, in the dark there, and became fixed,--a
+something never seen on his face before.  The evening was
+darkening fast.  The market had been over for an hour; the
+rumbling of the carts over the pavement grew more infrequent: 
+he listened to each, as it passed, because he thought it was to
+be for the last time.  For the same reason, it was, I suppose,
+that he strained his eyes to catch a glimpse of each passer-by,
+wondering who they were, what kind of homes they were going to,
+if they had children,--listening eagerly to every chance word in
+the street, as if--(God be merciful to the man! what strange
+fancy was this?)--as if he never should hear human voices again.
+
+It was quite dark at last.  The street was a lonely one.  The
+last passenger, he thought, was gone.  No,--there was a quick
+step:  Joe Hill, lighting the lamps.  Joe was a good old chap;
+never passed a fellow without some joke or other.  He remembered
+once seeing the place where he lived with his wife.  "Granny
+Hill" the boys called her.  Bedridden she Was; but so kind as
+Joe was to her! kept the room so clean!--and the old woman, when
+he was there, was laughing at some of t' lad's foolishness."
+The step was far down the street; but he could see him place the
+ladder, run up, and light the gas.  A longing seized him to be
+spoken to once more.
+
+"Joe!" he called, out of the grating.  "Good-bye, Joe!"
+
+The old man stopped a moment, listening uncertainly; then
+hurried on.  The prisoner thrust his hand out of the window, and
+called again, louder; but Joe was too far down the street.  It
+was a little thing; but it hurt him,--this disappointment.
+
+"Good-bye, Joe!" he called, sorrowfully enough.
+
+"Be quiet!" said one of the jailers, passing the door, striking
+on it with his club.
+
+Oh, that was the last, was it?
+
+There was an inexpressible bitterness on his face, as he lay
+down on the bed, taking the bit of tin, which he had rasped to
+a tolerable degree of sharpness, in his hand,--to play with, it
+may be.  He bared his arms, looking intently at their corded
+veins and sinews.  Deborah, listening in the next cell, heard a
+slight clicking sound, often repeated.  She shut her lips
+tightly, that she might not scream; the cold drops of sweat
+broke over her, in her dumb agony.
+
+"Hur knows best," she muttered at last, fiercely clutching the
+boards where she lay.
+
+If she could have seen Wolfe, there was nothing about him to
+frighten her.  He lay quite still, his arms outstretched,
+looking at the pearly stream of moonlight coming into the
+window.  I think in that one hour that came then he lived back
+over all the years that had gone before.  I think that all the
+low, vile life, all his wrongs, all his starved hopes, came
+then, and stung him with a farewell poison that made him sick
+unto death.  He made neither moan nor cry, only turned his worn
+face now and then to the pure light, that seemed so far off, as
+one that said, "How long, O Lord?  how long?"
+
+The hour was over at last.  The moon, passing over her nightly
+path, slowly came nearer, and threw the light across his bed on
+his feet.  He watched it steadily, as it crept up, inch by inch,
+slowly.  It seemed to him to carry with it a great silence.  He
+had been so hot and tired there always in the mills!  The years
+had been so fierce and cruel!  There was coming now quiet and
+coolness and sleep.  His tense limbs relaxed, and settled in a
+calm languor.  The blood ran fainter and slow from his heart.
+He did not think now with a savage anger of what might be and
+was not; he was conscious only of deep stillness creeping over
+him.  At first he saw a sea of faces:  the mill-men,--women he
+had known, drunken and bloated,--Janey's timid and pitiful-poor
+old Debs:  then they floated together like a mist, and faded
+away, leaving only the clear, pearly moonlight.
+
+Whether, as the pure light crept up the stretched-out figure, it
+brought with It calm and peace, who shall say?  His dumb soul
+was alone with God in judgment.  A Voice may have spoken for it
+from far-off Calvary, "Father, forgive them, for they know not
+what they do!"  Who dare say?  Fainter and fainter the heart
+rose and fell, slower and slower the moon floated from behind a
+cloud, until, when at last its full tide of white splendor swept
+over the cell, it seemed to wrap and fold into a deeper
+stillness the dead figure that never should move again.  Silence
+deeper than the Night!  Nothing that moved, save the black,
+nauseous stream of blood dripping slowly from the pallet to the
+floor!
+
+There was outcry and crowd enough in the cell the next day.  The
+coroner and his jury, the local editors, Kirby himself, and boys
+with their hands thrust knowingly into their pockets and heads
+on one side, jammed into the corners.  Coming and going all day.
+Only one woman.  She came late, and outstayed them all.  A
+Quaker, or Friend, as they call themselves.  I think this woman
+Was known by that name in heaven.  A homely body, coarsely
+dressed in gray and white.  Deborah (for Haley had let her in)
+took notice of her.  She watched them all--sitting on the end of
+the pallet, holding his head in her arms with the ferocity of a
+watch-dog, if any of them touched the body.  There was no
+meekness, no sorrow, in her face; the stuff out of which
+murderers are made, instead.  All the time Haley and the woman
+were laying straight the limbs and cleaning the cell, Deborah
+sat still, keenly watching the Quaker's face.  Of all the crowd
+there that day, this woman alone had not spoken to her,--only
+once or twice had put some cordial to her lips.  After they all
+were gone, the woman, in the same still, gentle way, brought a
+vase of wood-leaves and berries, and placed it by the pallet,
+then opened the narrow window.  The fresh air blew in, and swept
+the woody fragrance over the dead face, Deborah looked up with
+a quick wonder.
+
+"Did hur know my boy wud like it?  Did hur know Hugh?"
+
+"I know Hugh now."
+
+The white fingers passed in a slow, pitiful way over the dead,
+worn face.  There was a heavy shadow in the quiet eyes.
+
+"Did hur know where they'll bury Hugh?"  said Deborah in a
+shrill tone, catching her arm.
+
+This had been the question hanging on her lips all day.
+
+"In t' town-yard?  Under t' mud and ash?  T' lad'll smother,
+woman!  He wur born in t' lane moor, where t' air is frick and
+strong.  Take hur out, for God's sake, take hur out where t' air
+blows!"
+
+The Quaker hesitated, but only for a moment.  She put her strong
+arm around Deborah and led her to the window.
+
+"Thee sees the hills, friend, over the river?  Thee sees how the
+light lies warm there, and the winds of God blow all the day?
+I live there,--where the blue smoke is, by the trees.  Look at
+me," She turned Deborah's face to her own, clear and earnest,
+"Thee will believe me?  I will take Hugh and bury him there to-
+morrow."
+
+Deborah did not doubt her.  As the evening wore on, she leaned
+against the iron bars, looking at the hills that rose far off,
+through the thick sodden clouds, like a bright, unattainable
+calm.  As she looked, a shadow of their solemn repose fell on
+her face; its fierce discontent faded into a pitiful, humble
+quiet.  Slow, solemn tears gathered in her eyes:  the poor weak
+eyes turned so hopelessly to the place where Hugh was to rest,
+the grave heights looking higher and brighter and more solemn
+than ever before.  The Quaker watched her keenly.  She came to
+her at last, and touched her arm.
+
+"When thee comes back," she said, in a low, sorrowful tone, like
+one who speaks from a strong heart deeply moved with remorse or
+pity, "thee shall begin thy life again,--there on the hills.  I
+came too late; but not for thee,--by God's help, it may be."
+
+Not too late.  Three years after, the Quaker began her work.  I
+end my story here.  At evening-time it was light.  There is no
+need to tire you with the long years of sunshine, and fresh air,
+and slow, patient Christ-love, needed to make healthy and
+hopeful this impure body and soul.  There is a homely pine
+house, on one of these hills, whose windows overlook broad,
+wooded slopes and clover-crimsoned meadows,--niched into the
+very place where the light is warmest, the air freest.  It is
+the Friends' meeting-house.  Once a week they sit there, in
+their grave, earnest way, waiting for the Spirit of Love to
+speak, opening their simple hearts to receive His words.  There
+is a woman, old, deformed, who takes a humble place among them:
+waiting like them:  in her gray dress, her worn face, pure and
+meek, turned now and then to the sky.  A woman much loved by
+these silent, resfful people; more silent than they, more
+humble, more loving.  Waiting:  with her eyes turned to hills
+higher and purer than these on which she lives,dim and far off
+now, but to be reached some day.  There may be in her heart some
+latent hope to meet there the love denied her here,--that she
+shall find him whom she lost, and that then she will not be all-
+unworthy.  Who blames her?  Something is lost in the passage of
+every soul from one eternity to the other,--something pure and
+beautiful, which might have been and was not:  a hope, a talent,
+a love, over which the soul mourns, like Esau deprived of his
+birthright.  What blame to the meek Quaker, if she took her lost
+hope to make the hills of heaven more fair?
+
+Nothing remains to tell that the poor Welsh puddler once lived,
+but this figure of the mill-woman cut in korl.  I have it here
+in a corner of my library.  I keep it hid behind a curtain,--it
+is such a rough, ungainly thing.  Yet there are about it
+touches, grand sweeps of outline, that show a master's hand.
+Sometimes,--to-night, for instance,--the curtain is accidentally
+drawn back, and I see a bare arm stretched out imploringly in
+the darkness, and an eager, wolfish face watching mine:  a wan,
+woful face, through which the spirit of the dead korl-cutter
+looks out, with its thwarted life, its mighty hunger, its
+unfinished work.  Its pale, vague lips seem to tremble with a
+terrible question.  "Is this the End?"  they say,--"nothing
+beyond?  no more?"  Why, you tell me you have seen that look in
+the eyes of dumb brutes,--horses dying under the lash.  I know.
+
+The deep of the night is passing while I write.  The gas-light
+wakens from the shadows here and there the objects which lie
+scattered through the room:  only faintly, though; for they
+belong to the open sunlight.  As I glance at them, they each
+recall some task or pleasure of the coming day.  A half-moulded
+child's head; Aphrodite; a bough of forest-leaves; music; work;
+homely fragments, in which lie the secrets of all eternal truth
+and beauty.  Prophetic all!  Only this dumb, woful face seems to
+belong to and end with the night.  I turn to look at it.  Has
+the power of its desperate need commanded the darkness away?
+While the room is yet steeped in heavy shadow, a cool, gray
+light suddenly touches its head like a blessing hand, and its
+groping arm points through the broken cloud to the far East,
+where, in the flickering, nebulous crimson, God has set the
+promise of the Dawn.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Life in the Iron-Mills by Davis*
+
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