Chapter 10…

Chapter 10

"We have now arrived at a subject whose interest and significance for us are incalculable," said Father Waite, standing before the little group which had assembled in their usual meeting place in the first hours of the morning, for only at that time could Hitt and Haynerd leave the Express. "We have met to discuss briefly the meaning of that marvelous record of a whole nation's search for God, the Bible. As have been men's changing concepts of that 'something not ourselves that makes for righteousness,' so have been individuals, tribes, and nations. The Bible records the development of these concepts in Israel's thought; it records the unquenchable longings of that people for truth; it records their prophetic vision, their sacred songs, their philosophy, their dreams, and their aspirations. To most of us the Bible has long been a work of profound mystery, cryptical, undecipherable. And largely, I now believe, because we were wont to approach it with the bias of preconceived theories of literal, even verbal, inspiration, and because we could not read into it the record of Israel's changing idea of God, from a wrathful, consuming Lord of human caprice and passions, to the infinite Father of love, whom Jesus revealed as the Christ-principle, which worked through him and through all who are gaining the true spiritual concept, as is this girl who sits here on my right with the lad whom you have seen rescued by the Christ from the pit of hell."

His voice choked when he referred to Carmen and Sidney. But he quickly stifled his emotion, and went on:

"In our last meeting Mr. Hitt clearly showed us how the so-called human mind has seemed to develop as the suppositional opposite of the mind that is God; and how through countless ages of human reckoning that pseudo-mind has been revealing its various types, until at length, rising ever higher in the scale of being, it revealed its human man as a mentality whose consciousness is the suppositional activity of false thought, and which builds, incessantly, mental concepts out of this kind of thought and posits them within itself as material objects, as its own body, its universe, its all. And he showed us how, little by little, that human mind's interpretations of the infinite mind's true ideas became better, under the divine infiltration of truth, until at last there developed a type, now known to us as the Jewish nation, which caught a clearer glimpse of truth, and became conscious of that 'something not ourselves' which makes for right-thinking, and consequent correct mental concepts and externalizations. This, then, was the starting point of our religion. These first glimpses of truth, and their interpretations, as set forth in the writings of the early Jewish nation, constitute the nucleus of our Bible.

"But were these records exact statements of truth? Not always. The primitive human mind could only lisp its wonderful glimpses of truth in legend and myth. And so in fable and allegory the early Israelites sought to show the power of good over evil, and thereby stimulate a desire for right conduct, based, of course, on right-thinking. And thus it is that the most significant thing in their sacred records is their many, many stories of the triumph of the spiritual over the material.

"Time passed. The Hebrew nation waxed prosperous. Their right-thinking became externalized outwardly in material abundance and physical comfort. But the people's understanding was not sufficiently great to shield them from the temptation which material wealth and power always constitute. Their vision gradually became obscured. The mist of materialism spread over it. Those wonderful flashes of truth ceased to dart across their mental horizon. Their god became a magnified concept of the human man, who dickered with them over the construction of his temples, and who, by covenants, bribes, and promises, induced them to behave themselves. Prophecy died. And at length the beautiful vision faded quite away.

"Then followed four hundred human years, during which the vicissitudes of the Hebrew nation were many and dark. But during those long centuries there developed that world wonder, a whole nation's united longing for a deliverer! The prophets promised a great change in their fallen fortunes. Expectation grew keen. Desire expanded into yearning. Their God would not forsake them. Was not His grace sufficient? Though their concept of Him had grossly degenerated, yet the deliverer would come, he must!

"And he did. In the depths of their night--in the midst of the heaviest darkness that ever lay over the world--there arose a great light. Through the densest ignorance of the human mind filtered the Christ-principle, and was set forth by the channel through which it came, the man Jesus.

"What had happened? Had there been a conference among God, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, to debate the sending of salvation to mankind, as recorded by the poet Milton? Alas! what a crude, materialistic conception. Had God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son? But God is Love, infinite, unchanging. And His unique Son, the Christ-principle, available to all mankind, was 'before Abraham.' Had a great, dimly perceived principle been demonstrated, namely, that, if we yearn long and earnestly for the right, it comes? Had the Jewish nation 'demonstrated' the Christ? Had their centuries of looking and expecting resulted in a saviour being manifested to them? It was a period in the unfolding of human thought when civilization had reached its lowest depths. Morality had evaporated to the dregs. Rome was become the world's harlot. A few years more, and Nero would drag his vulpine immorality across the stage. Paganism was virtue in comparison with the lust of men in that dark hour. And yet, in the very midst of it, appeared the most venerated, the most beloved man in all history, bearing the Christ-message like a flaming torch!

"'Always our being is descending into us,' said Emerson. But our true being can be none other than infinite mind's idea of itself. Our true individuality must be the way that mind regards us. And thus it was that Israel's true being descended, filtering in through the thick mists of error. That true being was the deliverer, par excellence, for it was the message of truth that bade men deny themselves, their carnal selves, and know but the one God, infinite mind. That was the grace sufficient for them, that would have solved their problems, that would have enabled them to lay off the 'old man' and his woes and afflictions, and put on the 'new man,' divine mind's image. But the carnal mind sought a material kingdom. It wanted, not spirit, but matter. It cruelly rejected the message-bearer, and sought to kill his message by slaying him on the cross. And thereby the Jewish nation rent itself asunder, and sank into carnal oblivion. Ah, how they have been cursed by the crucifixion of Jesus!

"Men ask to-day: Did Jesus really live? Or is he a mythical character, like the gods of pagan Rome? Let us ask, in making our reply, how truth comes to mankind? Is it not always through some human channel? Then the great sayings attributed to Jesus at least came from a human being. Let us go further: it is the common history of mankind that truth comes to the human mind only after a period of preparation. Not conscious preparation, necessarily, but, rather, a preparation forced by events. The truth of a mathematical principle can not come to me unless I am prepared to receive it. And the greatest good comes to men only after they have learned the nothingness of the material ambitions and aims which they have been pursuing. By its own rottenness the world had been made fallow for truth. The awfulness of its own exposure in its rampant, unlicensed revels, had shown as never before the human mind's absolute nothingness--its nothingness as regards real value, permanence, and genuine good--in that first century of our so-called Christian era. And when the nothingness of the carnal mind was made plain, men saw the reality of the truth, as revealed in the Christ, back of it all. The divine message was whispered to a human mentality. And that mentality expanded under the God-influence, until at last it gave to the sin-weary world the Christ-principle of salvation. Let us call that human mentality, for convenience, the man Jesus.

"And now, was he born of a virgin? Impossible! And yet--let us see. It was common enough in his day for virgins to pretend to be with child by the Holy Ghost; and so we do not criticise those who refuse to accept the dogma of the virgin birth. But a little reflection in the light of what we have been discussing throws a wonderful illumination upon the question. If matter and material modes are real, then we must at once relegate the stories of the virgin birth, the miracles, the resurrection, and the ascension to the realm of myth. If the so-called laws of matter are real, irrefragable laws, then we indulgently, pass by these stories as figments of heated imaginations. But, regarding matter as a human, mortal concept, entirely mental, and wholly subject to the impress and influence of mind, and knowing, as we do now, that mental concepts change with changed thought, we are forced to look with more favor upon these questions which for centuries caused men to shed their fellows' blood.

"Mr. Hitt pointed out in our last meeting that mortal beings are interpretations in mortal or human mind of the infinite mind, God, and its ideas. The most perfect human interpretation of God's greatest idea, Man, was Christ Jesus. The real selfhood of every one of us is God's idea of us. It is spiritual, mental. The world calls it the 'soul,' the 'divine essence,' and the 'immortal spark.' The Christ was the real, spiritual selfhood of the man Jesus. So the Christ is the real selfhood of each of us. It is not born of the flesh. It is not conceived and brought forth in conformity with human modes. Now was this great fact externalized in the immaculate conception and birth? It does not grow and decay and pass away in death. It is the 'unique' Son of God which is back of each one of us. But the world has seen it only once in its fullness, and then through the man Jesus.

"Something happened in that first century of the so-called Christian era--something of tremendous significance. What was it? It was the birth of the Christ-idea into the human consciousness. Was the Christ-idea virgin-born? Aye, that it was, for God, infinite Mind, alone was its origin and parent. The speculation which has turned about that wonderful first century event has dealt with the human channel through which the Christ-idea flowed to mankind. But let us see what light our deductions throw even upon that.

"Referring all things to the realm of the mental, where we now know they belong, we see that man never fell, but that Israel's idea of God and man did fall, woefully. We see that the Christ-principle appeared among men; we see that to-day it works marvels; we must admit that throughout the ages before Jesus it had done so; we know now that the great things which Israel is recorded to have done were accomplished by the Christ-principle working through men, and that when their vision became obscured they lost the knowledge of that principle and how to use it. History records the working of great deeds by that same Christ-principle when it was re-born in our first century; and we also can see how the obscuring of the spiritual by the material in the Emperor Constantine's time caused the loss of the Church's power to do great works. We are forced to admit the omnipotence, immanence, and eternality of the Christ-principle, for it is divine mind, God himself. Moses, Elisha, Elijah, the ancient prophets, all had primitive perceptions of truth, and all became channels for the passing of the Christ-principle to mankind in some degree. But none of these men ever illustrated that principle as did the man Jesus. He is the most marvelous manifestation of God that has ever appeared among mankind; so true and exact was the manifestation that he could tell the world that in seeing him they were actually seeing the Father. It is quite true that many of his great sayings were not original with him. Great truths have been voiced, even by so-called pagans, from earliest times. But he demonstrated and made practical the truth in these sayings. And he exposed the nothingness of the human mental concept of matter by healing disease, walking the waves, and in other wonderful ways. It is true that long before his time Greek philosophers had hit upon the theory of the nothingness of matter. Plato had said that only ideas were real. But Jesus--or the one who brought the Christ-message--was the clearest mentality, the cleanest human window-pane, to quote Carmen, that ever existed. Through him the divine mind showed with almost unobscured fullness. God's existence had been discerned and His goodness proved from time to time by prophets and patriarchs, but by no means to the extent that Jesus proved it. There were those before him who had asserted that there was but one reality, and that human consciousness was not the real self. There were even those who believed matter to be created by the force of thought, even as in our own day. But it remained for Jesus to make those ideas intensely practical, even to the overcoming and dissolution of his whole material concept of the universe and man. And it remained for him to show that the origin of evil is in the lie about God. It was his mission to show that the devil was 'a man-killer from the beginning,' because it is the supposition that there is power apart from God. It was his life purpose to show mankind that there is nothing in this lie to cause fear, and that it can be overcome by overcoming the false thought which produces it. By overcoming that thought he showed men the evanescent nature of sickness and death. And sin he showed to be a missing of the mark through lack of understanding of what constitutes real good.

"Turn now again to the Bible, that fascinating record of a whole people's search for God and their changing concept of Him. Note that, wherever in its records evil seems to be made real, it is for the purpose of uncovering and destroying it by the vigorous statements of truth which you will almost invariably find standing near the exposition of error. So evil seemed very real in the first century of our era; but it was uncovered by the coming of Jesus. The exposure of evil revealed the Christ, right at hand."

"But," protested Haynerd, "let's get back to the question of the virgin birth."

"Very well," replied Father Waite. "But let us first consider what human birth is."

"Now there!" exclaimed Haynerd. "Now you are touching my lifelong question. If I am immortal, where was I before I was born?"

"Of which 'I' are you speaking, Ned?" asked Father Waite. "The real 'I' is God's image and likeness, His reflection. It was never born, and never dies. The human 'I' had a beginning. And therefore it will cease to be. The human mind makes its own laws, and calls them laws of nature, or even God's laws. And it obeys them like a slave. Because God is both Father and Mother to His children, His ideas, the human mind has decreed in its counterfeiting process that it is itself both male and female, and that the union of these two is necessary in order to give rise to another human mind. Do you see how it imitates the divine in an apish sort of way? And so elements of each sex-type of the human mind are employed in the formation of another, their offspring. The process is wholly mental, and is one of human belief, quite apart from the usage of the divine Mind, who 'spake and it was done,' mentally unfolding a spiritual creation. The real 'you,' Ned, has always existed as God's idea of Himself. It is spiritual, not material. It will come to light as the material 'you' is put off. The material 'you' did not exist before it was humanly born. It was produced in supposition by the union of the parent human minds, which themselves were reflections of the male and female characteristics of the communal mortal mind. It thus had a definite, supposititious beginning. It will therefore have a definite end."

"And so I'm doomed to annihilation, eh? That's a comforting thought!"

"Your mortal sense of existence, Ned, certainly is doomed to extinction. That which is supposition must go out. Oh, it doubtless will not all be destroyed when you pass through that change which we call death. It may linger until you have passed through many such experiences. And so it behooves you to set about getting rid of it as soon as possible, and thus avoid the unpleasant experience of countless death-throes. You see, Ned, an error in the premise will appear in the conclusion. Now you are starting with the premise that the human 'you' is real. That premise is not based upon fact. Its basis is rank error. All that you reflect of divine mind will endure permanently, but whatever you reflect of the lie regarding that mind will pass away. Human beings know nothing of their origin, nor of their existence. Why? Because there is nothing to know about them; they are entirely supposititious! Paul says, in his letter to the Romans: 'They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God.' The birth of the children of the flesh is wholly a human-mind process. The infant mentality thus produced knows nothing whatsoever of itself. It has no knowledge; is not founded on truth. It will later manifest hereditary beliefs, showing the results of prenatal mesmerism. Then it will receive the general assortment of human thought and opinion--very little of it based on actual truth--which the world calls education. Then it learns to regard itself as an individual, a separate being. And soon it attributes its origin to God. But the prenatal error will appear in the result. The being manifests every gradation of human thought; it grows; it suffers and enjoys materially; it bases its very existence upon matter; it manifests the false activity of human thought in material consciousness; and then it externalizes its beliefs, the consentaneous human beliefs, upon its body and in its environment; and finally, the activity of the false thought which constitutes its consciousness ceases--and the being dies. Yes, its death will be due to sin, to 'hamartio,' missing the mark. It never knew God. And that, Ned, is human life, so-called.

"Death is not in any sense a cessation of life. The being who dies never knew what it was to live. Death is the externalization of human, mortal beliefs, which are not based upon real knowledge, truth. And so, human birth is itself death. Paul said: 'They that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the spirit the things of the spirit.' In other words, mankind are striving terribly, desperately, to keep alive a sense of material, fleshly existence. But they can't do it. They are foredoomed to failure, despite the discovery of antitoxins. In the book of Job we read: 'The spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life.' Where, then, is the reality in prenatal mesmerism and the drag of heredity? It is all supposition, all a part of the one lie, the 'man-killer.'

"The change called death comes to all mortals. It is the culmination of the human mind's sense of limitation. It does not usher them into immortal, illimitable bliss. It but leaves them upon another seeming plane of mortal thought, there to drag out another sense of existence, unless they have so learned the lesson which Jesus taught as to enable them to overcome death. It will not be overcome for us. That is our work. We have been shown how to do it. Why, then, do we waste our time in trivial things; in the heaping up of useless money; in the vain strife for sensual pleasures? The mortal will live and die, and live and die, until at last he is beaten into line and forced to demonstrate the Christ-principle. Hadn't we better begin that right here and now? Wishing to die doesn't solve our problems. Suicide only makes us start again, worse off than before. We shall overcome death when we have overcome sin, for the physical manifestation called death is but the externalization in conscious experience of spiritual death--lack of a demonstrable understanding of Life, Truth, Spirit, which is God, unlimited good."

"And the Church, Protestant and Catholic, with their ceremonies, their Masses, and--"

"They have woefully missed the mark, Ned. They are all but spiritually dead. But I see protest rising in our good friends, Doctor Siler and Reverend Moore, so I will hasten on, for we have much ground still to cover.

"Now, knowing that birth is a humanly mental process, is it possible that the man Jesus was 'born of a virgin'? Quite so; but, more, no man ever conceived and born in the way human beings are generated has ever begun to approach Jesus in degree of spirituality. If he had been born in human ways, is it likely that he would ever have developed such intense spirituality? Well, not in a brief thirty-three years or so! And, on the other hand, if he had come into the world in some way other than by being born of a woman, would he have been understandable at all to the human mind? I think not. He would have been wholly in the realm of the mental, far above human perception. If he had been conceived by the union of the two sexes, as is the mortal-mind mode of generation, would he not have been too material to have so quickly developed that spirituality which made him the light of the world at the age of thirty-three? I think it is a fair question. The theory of the virgin birth at least seems to meet the need of a sort of middle course, whereby the man should not be too human to be the channel for the great measure of spirituality with which he was endowed, and yet should be human enough to be appreciable to other human minds.

"Remember, the Jesus who has been reported to us must have regarded matter as unreal, as nothingness. His works plainly show that. And they as plainly show that he came from the Father. His whole life was such as to render the virgin birth almost a necessity, as I see it. How otherwise can we explain him? And from a study of the Gospels I simply can not avoid the conclusion that his knowledge of the allness of God rendered matter such a nonentity to him that he overcame all material laws, overcame the world of matter, and even at the last dematerialized his material body. It's an astonishing thought--and yet, who can show that it is not true? There are some things that reason insists on our accepting, despite the paucity of human records."

"I believe, Mr. Waite," said Doctor Morton, "that the Gospels according to Mark and John make no mention of the virgin birth. Is it not so?"

"Quite true," replied Father Waite. "And I will go further: Biblical research during the past few years seems to have established the conclusion that Mark's Gospel antedates the others, but that prior to it there existed a collection of sayings by Jesus, called the Logia. This collection of sayings seems to have been originally written in Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke. Now Matthew Arnold tells us that the Gospel narratives passed through at least fifty years of oral tradition before they became fixed in the form in which we now have them. Of course it is quite possible that the story of the virgin birth arose during those fifty years, for we can imagine how the life of Jesus was then discussed! Matthew and Luke alone speak of the virgin birth. Mark's Gospel we believe to have been written by Mark himself. And we believe that Papias, who wrote about the middle of the second century, spoke truly when he said: 'Mark having become (or having been) Peter's interpreter, wrote all that he remembered (or all that Peter related) though he did not (record) in order that which was said or done by Christ.' In other words, even as Renan admits, the Gospel of Mark must be taken as authentically his. Now Matthew's Gospel depends for most of its data upon Mark and the Collection of sayings. Mark's Gospel does not mention the virgin birth; the Collection probably did. Also, Matthew probably did not write the Gospel attributed to him; but he almost certainly did write the Collection of sayings, from which in part the present Gospel according to Matthew was compiled. Luke's Gospel was undoubtedly written by the physician Luke, Paul's companion, and depended largely for its data upon Mark's Gospel and the Collection of Matthew. Yet we can not say that the omission of mention in the Gospels according to Mark and John of the virgin birth renders the story a legend, in view of our own present great knowledge of the constitution of matter, of material laws, and of the fact that the virgin birth is at least rendered credible by the subsequent very extraordinary career of Jesus. Moreover, remember that our New Testament is a small book, and that it is quite probable that a great mass of literature existed on the subject of Jesus and his work, and that it is possible that other of the disciples wrote treatises, perhaps many of them. How many of these touched on the subject of the virgin birth we may never know. Perhaps none; perhaps all. But this conclusion at least we must accept: the validity of the story of the virgin birth does not rest with the four Gospels which have come down to us out of the great mass of literature which probably once existed. Rather is the probability of the immaculate conception a function of our present knowledge of matter, its pseudo-laws, and the great fact that the entire life of Jesus as reported in all the Gospels lends weight to the belief that his birth was not in the ordinary mortal-mind manner."

"I accept that," said Hitt. "I believe you are right."

"And I," said Carmen, "can not see that the origin of the human channel through which the Christ-principle flowed to mankind is of any consequence. The principle has always existed. Jesus said that it existed before Abraham. It alone is the important thing."

"Very true," replied Father Waite. "It has been said that the immaculate conception was the result of Mary's realization that real man is the son of God. This is a beautiful thought. Certainly Jesus did seem to manifest some such metaphysical idea. Perhaps Mary was a woman of tremendous force of character. Perhaps it did come to her that her son should be the Messiah of his race. Jesus certainly did acquire the messianic consciousness--and thereby upheaved the world. But, whatever the human mode of birth, certainly the Christ-principle was brought into the world because of the world's tremendous need. It came as a response. It is only the confusing of the Christ with the man Jesus that is so largely responsible for the weakness of orthodox theology.

"But now, referring again to the Bible, let me say that the Pentateuch is composed of a variety of documents written by various authors. We have no positive proof that Moses had aught to do with its authorship, although parts of it may be based on data which either he originated or sanctioned. The books of Samuel exhibit a plurality of sources. The book of Isaiah was written to record the sayings of at least two persons, both men of marvelous spiritual vision. The Song of Solomon was originally probably a Persian love-poem. The book of Job illustrates the human-mind problem of suffering, and the utter inadequacy of philosophy to heal it. It is a ringing protest against conventional theology.

"But it is with the New Testament that we are particularly concerned, for we believe it to contain the method of salvation from human ills. None of the original documents are extant, of course. And yet, the most searching textual criticism goes to show that the New Testament books as we have them to-day are genuine reproductions of the original documents, with but very little adulteration of erroneous addition by later hands. This means much to us. I have already spoken of the first three Gospels. The book of Acts certainly was written by the author of the third Gospel, Luke. First Peter was composed by the disciple Peter, or was written under his sanction. The Gospel of John and the book of First John were written by one and the same author--but whether by the disciple John or not, I can not say. If this great disciple did not write the Fourth Gospel, at least his influence seems to be felt all through it. The probability is that he knew what was in it, and approved of it, although the actual composition may have been by another, possibly a very learned Greek. To me, the Fourth Gospel is the most masterly work ever composed by man. It stands absolutely alone. The criticism that John, being a Jew, could not have composed it, falls before the greater truth that, having become a Christian, he was no longer a Jew. He was a new creature. For how could he have been other, seeing that he had lived with Jesus?

"And now as to Paul, who contributes about one-third of the New Testament. I have mentioned the letters to the Thessalonians, Corinthians, Galatians, and Romans as indisputably his. To these we can add, with scarcely less weight of authenticity, Colossians, Philemon, Ephesians, and Philippians. As to the Epistles to Timothy and Titus, there is still doubt. These letters were written to the various Churches chronologically, as I have mentioned them. It has been said that Jesus was way over the heads of his reporters. That was inevitable. Even Paul misunderstood him at times. But--and here is the important fact for us--Paul's letters exhibit a marvelous spiritual growth in the man, and show him at last to be the grand master-metaphysician of the Christian era. Has it ever occurred to you that what the Gospels tell about is almost wholly spiritual? The material is all but neglected by their composers. Indeed, with the questions of time and place, the Gospel narrators seemed to have been but slightly concerned. But with the delineation of the Christ--ah! that was their theme. They were not writing a biography. They were painting a spiritual portrait. In the light of this great truth the apparent lack of harmony in the Gospel narratives loses significance. And how little there is in the Gospels of theology, of institution, of organization! How trifling are creed and doctrine, how little are Catholicism and Protestantism, compared with the stupendous fact that God is, and that His truth, the Christ-principle, is still here to-day and available!

"And so with Paul, he was expounding the 'method and secret' of the Christ. And he first had to work up to it himself. He may have thought, when he wrote his first letter to the Thessalonians, that the man Jesus would come again in the skies, with great pomp and surrounded by the Saints. But in his second letter he states plainly that the Christ will come when the 'old man' is laid off. Not much occasion for misunderstanding there, I think. Indeed, after Jesus so clearly stated that the kingdom of heaven was within men, the marvel is that there could have arisen any confusion whatsoever on the subject of the second coming of the Christ."

"I believe," interposed Reverend Moore, "that the Epistle to the Hebrews contains statements of belief in a judgment after death, in a heaven, a hell, and everlasting life, not wholly consistent with your remarks."

"The Epistle to the Hebrews," returned Father Waite, "was not written by Paul, nor is it quite consistent with his letters. But, read Paul's wonderful eighth chapter of Romans. Read his third chapter of First Corinthians. Read all his letters in the order in which I have mentioned them, which was as they were written, and you can not fail to grasp his marvelous expanding perception of the Christ-principle; the nothingness of the material concept; the impotence of the lie that opposes God, and constitutes all evil; and the necessity of right-thinking if one would work out his salvation from the errors that assail mankind. Paul shows that he passed through a 'belief period,' and that he emerged into the light of demonstrable understanding at last. If men had followed him they never could have fallen into the absurd theological beliefs of foreordination, infant damnation, the resurrection of the flesh, and all the other theological horrors and atrocities of the centuries.

"Yes, the Bible is, as Arnold said, based on propositions which all can verify. The trouble is, mankind have not tried to verify them! They have relegated all that to the life beyond the grave. I fear a sorry disappointment awaits them, for, even as Paul says, they will be after the change called death only what they were before. It is like recovering from a case of sickness, for sickness and death are alike manifestations of mortal thought. We awake from each still human, still with our problems before us. We must break the mesmerism of the belief that the practical application of Jesus' teachings must be relegated to the realm of death, or to the unattainable. We must apply the Christ-principle, and learn to hit the mark, for sin is always weakness, never strength.

"And remember this: having acquired a knowledge of the Christ, we are bidden to acknowledge him--that is, to act-our-knowledge. Many of the world's philosophers have worked out great truths. But they have rested content with that. Many scientists, knowing that matter is unreal, nevertheless conduct themselves as if it constituted the one and only real fact of existence! Is error like truth? Decidedly no! It is truth's exact opposite. Is truth real? Certainly it is! Then its opposite can not be real. The human mentality holds the belief that there is something apart from God, spirit. That belief becomes objectified in the human mentality as matter. And within matter is contained all evil of every sort and name. Evil is not, as the philosophers would have us believe, a lower form of good. It is not 'good in the making.' It is always error, the direct opposite of truth. And if truth is real and eternal, error can not be. See the grave mistake in which Emerson became enmeshed. He said: 'There seems to be a necessity in spirit to manifest itself in material forms.' Now follow that out to its logical conclusion. If spirit is synonymous with God, then God manifests Himself in both good and evil, fair and foul, life and death--and which is good, and which bad? All is alike the reflection of God. No, my friends, rather accept Jesus' statement that evil is the lie, of which no man need be afraid, and which all must and shall overcome. And the 'old man,' with all his material concepts of nature and the universe, must and will be laid off, thus revealing the spiritual man, the image and likeness of the one divine Mind.

"Now, just a few words about miracles, the great stumbling block to the acceptance of the Gospels. Are they, together with the entire Gospel narrative, legendary? If so, they must have arisen during those fifty years between Jesus and the recording of the narratives. But this very period is covered by Paul's letters, which record his thought. And even the most relentless of Bible critics admit the genuineness of Paul's authorship of the Epistles to the Romans, the Corinthians, the Thessalonians, and the Galatians. If the Gospel narratives are legends, they grew up and found acceptance in fifty years. A pretty fair miracle in itself, when we take into consideration the inherent incredulity of the human mind! As Dean Farrar says: 'Who would have invented, who would have merely imagined, things so unlike the thoughts of man as these?'

"Now Paul must have been acquainted with men who had seen and known Jesus. And we are forced to admit that Paul was a very strong, sane man. These legends could not have grown up in his day and been accepted by him. And as long as there were men living who had known Jesus--and that must have been as late as the last quarter of the first century--the true events of Jesus' life could hardly have given way to a set of childish legends. As a matter of recorded fact, the various Christian Churches had accepted Jesus within thirty years of the crucifixion. And, too, the words of Paul and the Synoptists were written at a time when the sick were still being healed and even the dead raised by the practical application of Jesus' teachings. Hence, miracles did not astonish them.

"Our own inability to perform the works attributed to Jesus is hardly sufficient ground for denying the belief that he really did them. For what is a miracle? Certainly that the greater portion of the New Testament was written by a few fishermen, a publican, and a tentmaker is one of the most stupendous miracles on record! And the miracle of miracles is Jesus Christ himself! Because Jesus is reported to have healed the sick, raised the dead, and walked the waves, all in opposition to material laws--the so-called laws of nature--the world says the reports are fantastic, that they are fables, and that his reporters were hypnotized, deluded! And yet I tell you that he did not break a single law! He did act in defiance of the so-called testimony of the physical senses, which has always been accepted by mankind as law. We now know what that sense-testimony is--human, mortal thought. He did rise above human consciousness of evil. And because he did so, he instantaneously healed the sick. A miracle expresses, not the beliefs of the human mind, but the law of God, infinite mind, and makes that law conceivable to the human mentality. God's laws are never set aside, for by very definition a law is immutable, else it ceases to be law. But when the human mind grows out of itself sufficiently to perceive those laws and to express them to its fellow-minds, the result is called a miracle. Moreover, the ability to perform miracles is but a function of spirituality. A miracle is a sign of one's having advanced to such a degree of spirituality as to enable him to rise above material consciousness and its limitations, which are called laws. The consciousness that knows no evil will perform miracles. The early Christians did great works. These works were the 'signs following,' and attested their knowledge of the allness of God. A miracle is simply a proof of God. Carmen--"

"Lewis!" protested the girl.

"Let me say it, please. Carmen knew that no power opposed to God could hold Sidney. And the 'sign' followed. Yes, she performed a miracle. She broke a human-mind, so-called law, a limitation. She proved God's law of harmony and holiness--wholeness--to be omnipresent and omnipotent. And, mark me, friends, every one of us must learn to do likewise! Not only must the Church obey Jesus and do the works which he did, but every individual will have to do them himself."

"His works were done for a special reason, Mr. Waite," interposed Reverend Moore. "They were to testify to his messiahship. They are not required of us."

Father Waite silently regarded the minister for some moments. Then he went on gently:

"It seems incredible that the plain teachings of Jesus could have been so warped and twisted as they have been by orthodox theology. Christianity is so simple! Why should even the preachers themselves condemn the one who seeks to obey Christ? Mr. Moore, the real man is God's highest idea of Himself. The human mind makes mental concepts of God's man. And Jesus was the grandest concept of God's idea of Himself that the human mind has ever constructed by means of its interpretations. He was the image of truth. One of his grandest characteristics was his implicit obedience to his vision of the Father. And he demanded just as implicit obedience from us. But he bade us, again and again, heal the sick and raise the dead!"

"We heal the sick! We have our physicians!"

"Yes? And Asa had his physicians to whom he turned--with the result that he 'slept with his fathers.' There is no more ironical statement in the whole Bible than that. We turn to our physicians because we have no faith in God. Materia medica physicians do not heal the sick. They sometimes succeed in causing the human mind temporarily to substitute a belief of health for a belief of disease that is all. But Jesus and the early Christians healed by true prayer--the prayer of affirmation, the prayer that denied reality to evil, and affirmed the omnipotence of God. And that was done through an understanding of God as immutable law, or principle."

"Would you pray to a principle?" demanded Reverend Moore, with a note of contempt in his voice. "I prefer my own concept of God, as one who hears our petitions, and pities us, and not as a lifeless principle!"

"God is principle, Mr. Moore," replied Father Waite, "in that He is 'that by which all is.' And in order to be such He must be, as the Bible says, 'the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.' He must be immovable, regardless of human pleading and petition. And so true prayer, the prayer that draws an answer, is not an objective appeal to Him, but is an intelligent application of the Christ-principle to all our problems and needs. Such prayer will remove mountains in proportion to the understanding and motive back of it. And such prayer does not seek to inform the Almighty of the state of affairs here among men, informing Him that evil is real and rampant, and begging that He will stoop down and remove it. It is the prayer that manifests man's oneness with the infinite mind as its image, reflecting a knowledge of the allness of good and the consequent unreality and powerlessness of evil, the lie about it. It was healing by such prayer, Mr. Moore, that the Episcopal Synod rejected only recently. Instead of doing the healing themselves by means of the principle given them, they still plead with God, the immovable and immutable, to do it for them, provided the very uncertain science of materia medica fails.

"The true method of prayer was employed by the early Christians, until the splendid vision of the Christ became obscured and finally lost to the Church by its bargaining with Constantine for a mess of pottage, namely, temporal power. Then began to rise that great worldly institution, the so-called Holy Church. In the first half of the sixth century Justinian closed the schools of philosophy at Athens. For a while Judaizing Christianity continued its conflict with Gnosticism. And then both merged themselves into the Catholic form of faith, which issued forth from Rome, with Christian tradition grafted upon paganism. Theology and ritualism divided the gospel of healing the sick and saving the sinner into two radically different systems, neither of which is Christian, and neither of which can either heal or save. Since then, lip-service and ceremonial have taken the place of healing the sick and raising the dead. The world again slipped back steadily from the spiritual to the material, and to-day ethics constitutes our religion, and stupid drugs hold sway where once sat enthroned the healing Christ-principle."

"I would remind you, Mr. Waite, that I have Catholic leanings myself," said Doctor Siler. "I don't like to hear either my religion or my profession abused."

"My criticism, Doctor," replied Father Waite, "is but an exposure of the entrenched beliefs and modes of the human mind."

"But, sir, the Church is a great social force, and a present necessity."

"The worth of a belief as a social force, Doctor, must be ascertained from its fruits. The Roman Church has been an age-long instigator of wars, disorders, and atrocious persecutions throughout the world. Its assumption that its creed is the only religious truth is an insult to the world's expanding intelligence. Its arrogant claim to speak with the authority of God is one of the anomalies of this century of enlightenment. Its mesmeric influence upon the poor and ignorant is a continuous tragedy."

"The poor and ignorant! Are you unmindful of the Church's schools and hospitals?"

"No, Doctor. Nor am I ignorant of the fact that the success of Christianity is not measured by hospitals. Rather, their continuance attests the lamentable failure of its orthodox misinterpretation. I have been a priest, Doctor. I do not want to see this splendid country forced into the iron shackles of priestcraft."

"It can not happen here!" cried Haynerd, pounding the table with his fist. "The time has passed when a man can say, 'My church, be she right or wrong, but my church!' and insist that it shall be forced upon us, whether we like it or not!"

"Doctor," continued Father Waite, "the Romanist has always missed the mark. He prayed to a God of love to give him power to exterminate heretics--those who differed with him in belief. But he prayed with iniquity, hatred, murder in his heart; and God, who is too pure to know evil, heard him not. Prayer is the affirmation of omnipotent good. Is it good to murder one's fellow-men? The Psalmist wrote: 'If I regard iniquity in my heart the Lord will not hear me.' That is why the Church's prayers and curses have failed, and why she herself is a failing institution to-day. I say this in pity, not in malice."

"I, sir, believe in a religion that can hate," returned the doctor. "Christianity is as much a religion of hate as of love--hatred of all that is evil and opposed to the revealed Word of God."

"And thereby your religion will fail, and has failed, for God is love. You, by your hatred of what you consider evil, make evil real. Indeed, the Church has always emphasized evil as a great and living reality. How could it ever hope to overcome it then? Your Church, Doctor, has little of the meekness of the Christ, and so, little of his strength. It has little of his spirituality. Its numbers and great material wealth do not constitute power. Its assumptions remind me of the ancient Jews, who declared that God spent much of His time reading their Talmud. You will have to lay aside, Doctor, all of it, and turn to the simple, demonstrable teachings of Jesus. When you have learned to do the works he did, then will you have justified yourself and your faith."

While Father Waite was speaking, Carmen had quietly risen and taken her place at the piano. When he concluded, she began to play and sing softly. As the sweet melody flowed out through the room the little group became silent and thoughtful. Again it was that same weird lament which the girl had sung long before in the Elwin school to voice the emotions which surged up in her during her loneliness in the great city. In it her auditors heard again that night the echoing sighs of the passive Indians, enslaved by the Christian Spaniards. Hitt's head sank upon his breast as he listened. Haynerd tried to speak, but choked. The Beaubien buried her face in her hands and wept softly. The lines about Doctor Siler's mouth relaxed, and his lips trembled. He rose quietly and went around to where Father Waite sat.

"My friend--" He bent and took Father Waite's hand. "We are--friends?"

Father Waite sprang to his feet and threw an arm about the doctor. "We are more than that, Doctor," he whispered. "We are brothers. And in reality we are both, here and now, beloved children of God."

Doctor Siler bowed. Then he nodded to the others, and took his departure. As he passed the piano Carmen rose and seized his hand.

"You know, Doctor, that we love you, don't you?"

"Your love," he murmured, as he bent over her hand, "is from the Christ. Nay, it is the Christ himself among us!"

He would have said more, but his voice broke. Then he went out.

When Hitt, Reverend Moore, and Doctor Morton had left, Haynerd, who had remained for a moment to speak to Father Waite, turned to the Beaubien.

"Madam," he said, "Mr. Hitt is a remarkable man. He is conducting a remarkable newspaper. But--" He stopped and looked at Carmen. "Well, if I mistake not, his quietness this evening indicated his belief that this might be our last meeting for some time."

"Why, Ned?"

Haynerd shook his head dubiously. Then, abruptly:

"Telephone me, Carmen, if anything of interest comes up to-morrow in Avon."

The Beaubien turned quickly to the girl. "You are going to Avon to-morrow? Don't! Please don't!" There was a look of fear in her eyes.

Carmen drew the woman to her, then stooped and kissed her cheek. "Mother dearest, I go to Avon with my God."

The Beaubien bowed her head. She knew it was so.

And the girl went early the next morning.

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Chapter 11

The town of Avon, two hours from New York, lay along Avon creek, from which its first manufacturing industries derived their motive power. Years before, when it was little more than a barren stretch of sand, some enterprising soul had built a cotton mill there, with only a few primitive looms. As the years passed, and kindly Congresses reared about the industry a high protective wall, the business prospered marvelously. But shortly after the death of the senior Ames the company became involved, through mismanagement, with the result that, to protect itself, the house of Ames and Company, the largest creditor, was obliged to take over its mills.

At first, J. Wilton Ames was disposed to sell the assets of the defunct company, despite the loss to his bank. But then, after a visit of inspection, and hours of meditation on certain ideas which had occurred to him, he decided to keep the property. The banging of the looms, the whirr of the pickers, the sharp little shrieks of the spinning machines, fascinated him, as he stood before them. They seemed to typify the ceaseless throbbing of his own great brain. They seemed, too, to afford another outlet for that mighty flood of materialistic thought and energy which flowed incessantly through it.

And so he set about reorganizing the business. He studied the process of cloth manufacture. He studied the growth and handling of cotton. He familiarized himself with every detail of the cotton market. He was already well versed in the intricacies of the tariff. And soon the idle machinery was roaring again. Soon the capacity of the mills was doubled. And soon, very soon, the great Ames mills at Avon had become a corporate part of our stupendous mechanical development of the century just closed.

When Carmen stepped from the train that morning she stood for a moment looking uncertainly about her. Everywhere on one side as far as she could see were low, ramshackle frame houses; a few brick store buildings stood far up the main street; and over at her right the enormous brick mills loomed high above the frozen stream. The dull roar of the machinery drifted through the cold air to her ears. Up the track, along which she had just come, some ragged, illy clad children were picking up bits of coal. The sight seemed to fix her decision. She went directly to them, and asked their names.

"Anton Spivak," answered one of the children dully, when she laid a hand on his shoulder.

"And where do you live?"

"Over dere," pointing off to the jungle of decrepit sheds. "Me an' him, we worked in de mills; but dere ain't no work fer us now. Dey's on half time."

"Take me to your home," she said firmly.

The boy looked his astonishment. "Dere ain't nobody to home," he replied. "De ol' man an' woman works in de mills daytimes."

"Come-a home wi' me," spoke up the boy's companion, a bright-faced little urchin of some ten years who had given his name as Tony Tolesi. "We lives in de tenements."

Carmen looked at him for a moment. "Come," she said.

Up the main street of the town they went for a short distance, then turned and wended their course, through narrow streets and byways, down toward the mills. In a few minutes they were in the district where stood the great frame structures built by the Ames company to house its hands. Block after block of these they passed, massive, horrible, decrepit things, and at last stopped at a grease-stained, broken door, which the little fellow pushed open. The hall beyond was dark and cold. Carmen followed shivering, close after the boy, while he trotted along, proud of the responsibility of conducting a visitor to his home. At the far end of the hall the lad plunged into a narrow staircase, so narrow that a stout man could not have mounted it. Up four of these broken flights Carmen toiled after him, and then down a long, desolate corridor, which sent a chill into the very marrow of her bones.

"Dis is where we lives, Missy," announced the little fellow. "Miss-a Marcus, she live in dere," pointing to the door directly opposite. "She ain't got only one arm."

He pushed open the door before which they had halted. A rush of foul air and odors of cooking swept out. They enveloped the girl and seemed to hurl her back. A black-haired woman, holding a crying baby in her arms, rose hastily from an unmade bed at one side of the room. Two little girls, six or eight years of age, and a boy still younger, ranged about their mother and stared in wide-eyed wonder.

"Dis-a lady, she come to visit," announced Carmen's guide abruptly, pointing a dirty finger at her.

The woman's face darkened, and she spoke harshly in a foreign tongue to the little fellow.

"She say," the boy interpreted, as a crestfallen look spread over his face, "she say she don't spik Inglese."

"But I speak your language," said the girl, going quickly to her and extending a hand. Then, in that soft tongue which is music celestial to these Neapolitan strangers upon our inhospitable shores, she added, "I want to know you; I want to talk to you."

She glanced quickly about the room. A littered, greasy cook stove stood in one corner. Close to it at either end were wooden couches, upon which were strewn a few tattered spreads and blankets, stained and grimy. A broken table, a decrepit chest of drawers, and a few rickety chairs completed the complement of furniture. The walls were unadorned, except for a stained chromo of the Virgin, and the plaster had fallen away in many places. There was only one window in the room. Several of its panes were broken and stuffed with rags and papers.

At the sound of her own language the woman's expression changed. A light came into her dull eyes, and she awkwardly took the proffered hand.

"You are--from Italy?" she said in her native tongue. Then, sweeping the girl's warm attire with a quick glance, "You are rich! Why do you come here?"

"Your little boy brought me. And I am glad he did. No, I am not from Italy. I am rich, yes, but not in money."

The woman turned to her children and sent the little brood scattering. At another sharp command little Tony set out a soiled, broken chair for Carmen. But before the girl could take it the woman's voice again rose sharply.

"Wait!" she commanded, turning fiercely upon Carmen. "You are--what do you say? slumming. You come with your gay party to look us over and go away laughing! No! You can not stay!"

Carmen did not smile. But reaching out, she gently lifted the heavy baby from the woman's arms and sat down with it. For a moment she patted its cheeks and bent tenderly over it. Then she looked up at the bewildered mother.

"I have come here," she said softly, "because I love you."

The woman's lips parted in astonishment. She turned dully and sat down on one of the begrimed beds. Her little ones gathered about her, their soiled fingers in their mouths, or clutching their tattered gowns, as they gazed at the beautiful creature who had suddenly come into their midst.

Then the woman found her voice again. "Eh! You are from the mission? You come to talk of heaven? But I am busy."

"I am not from the mission," replied the girl gently. "I have come to talk, not of heaven, but of earth, and of you, and of Tony," smiling down into the eager face of the little boy as he stood before her.

"You can't have Tony!" cried the mother, starting up. "You can't take any of my children! The judge took Pietro Corrello's boy last week--but you can't have mine! Go away from here!"

"I don't want your children," said Carmen, smiling up at the frightened, suspicious mother. "I want you. I want you to help me to help all of these people here who need us. The mills are running only half time, aren't they? The people do not have enough to eat. But we, you and I, are going to make things better for them, for everybody here, aren't we?

"But first," she went on hastily, to further allay the poor woman's fears and to check additional protest, "suppose we plan our dinner. Let's see, Tony, what would you like?"

The boy's lips instantly parted. His eyes began to glisten. He glanced inquiringly at his mother; but no sign came from her. Then he could no longer contain himself:

"Spaghetti!" he blurted. "Soup! Buns!"

Carmen drew out her purse and turned to the woman. "Come with me," she said. "While we are gone, Tony and the children will wash the dishes and set the table. Come."

For a moment the woman looked uncomprehendingly at the girl, then at her children, and then about the miserable room in which they were huddled. Amazement and confusion sat upon her heavy features. Then these gave way to another dark look of suspicion. She opened her mouth--

But before she could voice her resentment, Carmen rose and threw an arm about her. Then the girl quickly drew the startled woman to her and kissed her on the cheek. "Come," she whispered, "get your shawl. We'll be back soon."

God's universal language is the language of love. All nations, all tribes understand it. The flood-gates, long barred, swiftly opened, and the tired, miserable woman sank sobbing upon the bed. She could not comprehend what it was that had come so unannounced into her dreary existence that cold winter morning. People were not wont to treat her so. Her life had been an endless, meaningless struggle against misery, want, grinding oppression. People did not put their arms around her and kiss her thus. They scoffed at her, they abused her, they fought with her! She hated them, and the world in which she lived!

"I know, I know," whispered Carmen, as she drew the sobbing woman's head upon her shoulder. "But things will be better now. Love has found you."

The woman suddenly raised up. "You--you are--from heaven? An angel?" She drew back, and a frightened, superstitious look came into her face.

"Yes," said Carmen softly, taking the cue, "I am an angel, right from heaven. Now you are no longer afraid of me, are you? Come."

The woman rose mechanically and took up her thin shawl. Carmen gave a few directions to the gaping children. And as she went out into the bleak hall with the woman she heard one of them whisper in tones of awe:

"Tony, she said she--she was--an angel! Quick! Get down on your knees and cross yourself!"

* * * * *

Upward to the blue vault of heaven, like the streaming mists that rise through the tropic moonlight from the hot llanos, goes the ceaseless cry of humanity. Oh, if the god of the preachers were real, his heart must have long since broken! Upward it streams, this soul-piercing cry; up from the sodden, dull-brained toiler at the crashing loom; up from the wretched outcast woman, selling herself to low passions to escape the slavery of human exploitation; up from the muttering, ill-fed wreck, whose life has been cashed into dividends, whose dry, worthless hulk now totters to the scrap heap; up from the white-haired, flat-chested mother, whose stunted babes lie under little mounds with rude, wooden crosses in the dreary textile burial grounds; up from the weak, the wicked, the ignorant, the hopeless martyrs of the satanic social system that makes possible the activities of such human vultures as the colossus whose great mills now hurled their defiant roar at this girl, this girl whose life-motif was love.

Close about her, at the wretched little table, sat the wondering group of children, greedily gorging themselves on the only full meal that they could remember. And with them sat the still bewildered mother, straining her dark eyes at the girl, and striving to see in her a human being, a woman like herself. At her right sat the widow Marcus, who lived just across the hall. Her husband had been crushed to death in one of the pickers two years before. The company had paid her a hundred dollars, but had kept back five for alleged legal fees. She herself had lost an arm in one of these same pickers, long ago, because the great owner of the mills would not equip his plant with safety devices.

"Come, Tony!" said the mother at length, as a sense of the reality of life suddenly returned to her. "The lunch for your father!"

Tony hurriedly swept the contents of his plate into his mouth, and went for the battered dinner pail.

"My man goes to work at six-thirty in the morning," she explained to Carmen, when the little fellow had started to the mills with the pail unwontedly full. "And he does not leave until five-thirty. He was a weaver, and he earned sometimes ten dollars a week. But he didn't last. He wore out. And so he had to take a job as carder. He earns about eight dollars a week now. But sometimes only six or seven."

"But you can't live on that, with your children!" exclaimed Carmen.

"Yes, we could," replied the woman, "if the work was steady. But it isn't. You see, if I could work steady, and the children too, we could live. I am a good spinner. And I am not nearly so worn out as he is. I have several years left in me yet."

The widow Marcus, who spoke the language from an association with Italian immigrants since childhood, added her comments from time to time. She was a gray-haired, kindly soul, bearing no enmity toward the man to whom she had yielded her husband's life and her own.

"A man's no good in the mills after he's fifty," she said. "You see, Miss, it's all piece-work, and a man has to be most terribly spry and active. The strain is something awful, day after day, in the noise and bad air, and having to keep your eyes fixed on your work for ten hours at a stretch; and he wears out fast. Then he has to take a job where he can't make so much. And when he's about fifty he's no good for the mills any more."

"And then what?" asked Carmen.

"Well, if he hasn't any children, he goes to the poor-house. But, if he has, then they take care of him."

"Then mill workers must have large families?"

"Yes, they've got to, Miss. The little ones must work in the mills, too. These mills here take them on when they are only twelve, or even younger. Tony has worked there, and he is only ten. It's against the law; but Mr. Ames gets around the law some way."

"Tell me, Mrs. Marcus, how do you live?" the girl asked.

"I? Oh, I manage. The company paid me some money two years ago, and I haven't spent all of it yet. Besides, I work round a bit. I'm pretty spry with one arm."

"But--you do not pay rent for your home?"

"Oh, yes. I have only one room. It's small. There's no window in it. It's an inside room."

"And you pay rent--to Mr. Ames--the man whose machines killed your husband and took off your arm--you still pay rent to him, for one little room?"

"Yes, Miss. He owns these tenements. Why, his company gave me almost a hundred dollars, you know! I was lucky, for when Lizzie Sidel's man lost his hand in the cog wheels he went to law to sue the company, and three years afterward the case was thrown out of court and he had to pay the costs himself. But he was a picker-boss, and got nine dollars a week."

A little hand stole up along Carmen's arm. She looked down into the wondering face of the child. "I--I just wanted to see, Signorina, if you were real."

"I have been wondering that myself, dear," replied the girl, as her thought dwelt upon what she had been hearing.

"I must go now, Miss," said the widow Marcus, rising. "I promised to drop in and look after Katie Hoolan's children this afternoon. She's up at the mills."

"Then I will go with you," Carmen announced. "But I will come back here," she added, as some little hands seized hers. "If not to-day, then soon--perhaps to-morrow."

She crossed the cold hall with Mrs. Marcus, and entered the doorway which led to the little inner room where dwelt the widow. There were a dozen such rooms in the building, the latter informed her. This one in particular had been shunned for many years, for it had a bad reputation as a breeder of tuberculosis. But the rent was low, and so the widow had taken it after her man was killed. It contained a broken stove, a dirty bed, and a couple of unsteady chairs. The odor was fetid. The walls were damp, and the paper which had once covered them was molding and rotting off.

"It won't stay on," the widow explained, as she saw the girl looking at it. "The walls are wet all the time. Comes up from the cellar. The creek overflows and runs into the basement. They call this the 'death-room.'"

Death! Carmen shuddered when she looked about this fearful human habitation. Yet, "The only death to be feared," said Paracelsus, "is unconsciousness of God." Was this impoverished woman, then, any less truly alive than the rich owner of the mills which had robbed her of the means of existence? And can a civilization be alive to the Christ when it breeds these antipodal types?

"And yet, who permits them?" Haynerd had once exclaimed. "Ames's methods are the epitome of hell! But he is ours, and the worthy offspring of our ghastly, inhuman social system. We alone are to blame that he debauches courts, that he blinds executives, and that he buys legislatures! We let him make the laws, and fatten upon the prey he takes within their limits. Aye, he is the crafty, vicious, gold-imbruted manifestation of a whole nation's greed!" Nay, more, he is the externalization of a people's ignorance of God.

Carmen's throat filled as she watched the old woman bustling about the wretched room and making a feeble attempt at order.

"You see," the widow went on, happy in the possession of an auditor, "there is no use making apologies for the looks of my room; I couldn't make it look much better if I tried. There's no running water. We have to get water from the hydrant down back of the house. It is pumped there from the creek, and it's a long climb up these stairs when you've got only one arm to hold the bucket. And I have to bring my coal up, too. The coal dealer charges extra for bringing it up so far."

Carmen sat down on an empty box and watched her. The woman's lot seemed to have touched the depths of human wretchedness, and yet there burned within her soul a something that the oppression of human avarice could not extinguish.

"It's the children, Miss, that I think about," she continued. "It's not so bad as when I was a little one and worked in the cloth mills in England. I was only six when I went into the mills there. I worked from seven in the morning until after six at night. And the air was so bad and we got so tired that we children used to fall asleep, and the boss used to carry a stick to whip us to keep us awake. My parents died when I was only eight. They worked in the Hollow-ware works, and died of lead poisoning. People only last four or five years at that work."

Carmen rose. "How many children are employed in these mills here?" she asked.

"I can't say, Miss. But hundreds of them."

"I want to see them," said the girl, and there was a hitch in her voice as she spoke.

"You can go down and watch them come out about six this evening. It's a sight to a stranger. But now I must hurry to look after the Hoolan babes."

When she again reached the street Carmen turned and looked up at the hideous structure from which she had emerged; then she drew a long breath. The foul air of the "death-room" seemed to fill her lungs as with leaden weights. The dim light that lay over the wretched hovel hung like a veil before her eyes.

"Katie lives a block down the street," said the widow, pointing in the direction. "She was burned out last winter. These tenements don't have fire-escapes, and the one she lived in burned to the ground in an hour. She lived on the second floor, and got out. But--six were burned to death."

It seemed to Carmen as she listened to the woman that the carnal mind's chamber of horrors was externalized there in the little town of Avon, existing with the dull consent of a people too ignorant, too imbruted, too mesmerized by the false values of life to rise and destroy it.

All that cold winter afternoon the girl went from door to door. There was no thought of fear when she met dull welcomes, scowls, and menacing glances. In humble homes and wretched hovels; to Magyar, Pole, Italian alike; to French Canadian, Irish and Portuguese; and to the angry, the defiant, the sodden, the crushed, she unfolded her simple banner of love, the boundless love that discriminates not, the love that sees not things, but the thoughts and intents of the heart that lie behind them. And dark looks faded, and tears came; withered hearts opened, and lifeless souls stirred anew. She knew their languages; and that knowledge unlocked their mental portals to her. She knew their thoughts, and the blight under which they molded; and that knowledge fell like the sun's bright rays upon them. She knew God, their God and hers; and that knowledge began, even on that dull, gray afternoon, to cut into the chains of human rapacity which enslaved them.

At six that evening she stood at the tall iron gate of the mill yard. Little Tony was at her side, clutching her hand. A single electric lamp across the street threw a flickering, yellow light upon the snow. The great, roaring mills were ablaze with thousands of glittering eyes. Suddenly their monster sirens shrieked, a blood-curdling yell. Then their huge mouths opened, and a human flood belched forth.

Carmen gazed with riveted sight. They were not the image and likeness of God, these creatures, despite the doctrinal platitudes of the Reverend Darius Borwell and the placid Doctor Jurges. They were not alive, these stooping, shuffling things, despite the fact that the religiously contented Patterson Moore would argue that God had breathed the spirit of life into the thing of dust which He created. And these children, drifting past in a great, surging throng! Fathers and mothers of a generation to come! Carmen knew that many of them, despite their worn looks, were scarcely more than ten years old. These were the flesh and blood upon which Ames, the jungle-beast, waxed gross! Upon their thin life-currents floated the magnificent Cossack!

She turned away in silence. Yes, she was right, evil can not be really known. There is no principle by which to explain the hideous things of the human mind. And then she wondered what the Reverend Darius Borwell did to earn that comfortable salary of ten thousand a year in his rich New York church.

"It's quite a sight, ain't it, Miss?" said a voice close by.

Carmen turned and confronted a priest. He was a man of medium height, young, and of Irish descent.

"It's a great sight," he continued, with a touch of brogue in his tones. "Hey, Fagin!" he cried, catching a passing workman's arm. "Where's Ross?"

"He ain't worked to-day, Father," replied the man, stopping and touching his cap.

The young priest uttered an exclamation of displeasure. Then, as the workman started away:

"You'll be at the Hall to-night, Fagin? And bring everybody you can."

The man addressed nodded and gave an affirmative grunt, then passed on into the darkness.

"It's trying to reach a few of 'em I am," remarked the priest. "But it's slow work. When a man's stomach's empty he hasn't much respect for morality. And I can't feed the lot of 'em!"

Carmen gazed into the kindly blue eyes of the priest and wondered. "How are you reaching them?" she asked. "I am very much interested."

The priest returned the girl's searching look. "In settlement work?" he queried.

"No--but I am interested in my fellow-beings."

"Ah, then you'll understand. I've some rooms, some on Main street, which I call the Hall, and some down in the--well, the bad district, which I call the Mission. They're reading rooms, places for men to meet, and get acquainted, and rest, and talk. The Hall's for the fellows who work, like this Fagin. The Mission's for the down-and-outs."

"But--are your rooms only for--for men of your faith?"

"Nary a bit!" exclaimed the priest with a little laugh. "Race or religion don't figure. It's to give help to every man that needs it."

"And you are giving your life to help these people?" the girl went on. "I want to see your Hall and Mission. Take me to them," she abruptly demanded.

The priest gave a start of surprise. He looked down at little Tony, and then up at Carmen again.

"Come," she said. "We will leave the boy at his door, and then go to your Mission and Hall. Now tell me, you are a Roman Catholic priest?"

"Yes," he said mechanically, following her as she started away.

"How did you happen to get into this sort of work?" she pursued.

"Oh, I've been at it these ten years!" he returned, now recovered from his surprise, and pleased to talk about his work. "I'd had some experience in New York in the Bowery district. I came to the conclusion that there were mighty few down-and-outs who couldn't be set upon their pins again, given half a chance by any one sufficiently interested. There's the point. You see, Miss, I believe in my fellow-men. The results have justified my labors. Oh, it's only temporary, I know. It ain't going to change the whole social system. It's a makeshift. But it helps a bit--and I like it.

"But," he continued more seriously, "there's going to be trouble here. A strike is coming. And it's going to be a bad one. I wish I could convince Mr. Ames."

"Have you tried?" she asked.

"I've written him several times of late. It doesn't do any good. His secretary writes back that Mr. Ames is doing all he can. But it's not much I see he's doing, except to go on sucking the blood from these poor devils down here!"

They soon reached the tenement where Tony lived, and Carmen asked the priest to go up with her. He raised a hand and smiled.

"No," he said, "the good woman doesn't like priests. And my labors don't reach the women anyway, except through the men. They constitute my field. Some one else must work among the women. I'll wait for you here."

It was only by making many promises that Carmen could at last get away from the little group on the fourth floor. But she slipped a bill into Tony's hands as she went out, and then hurriedly crossed the hall and opened the unlocked door of the widow Marcus's room. The place was empty. Carmen pinned a five-dollar bill upon the pillow and hastened out.

"Now," said the priest, when the girl had joined him in the street below, "it ain't right to take you to the Mission--"

"We'll go there first," the girl calmly announced. "And then to the Hall. By the way, there's a telephone in your place? I want to call up the health officer. I want to report the condition of these tenements."

The priest laughed. "It won't do any good, Miss. I've camped on his heels for months. And he can't do anything, anyway. I see that. If he gets too troublesome to those higher up, why, he gets fired. They don't want his reports. He isn't here to report on conditions, but to overlook 'em. It's politics."

"You mean to say that nothing can be done in regard to those awful buildings which Mr. Ames owns and rents to his mill hands?" she said.

"That's it," he replied. "It's criminal to let such buildings stand. But Ames owns 'em. That's enough."

They went on in silence for some minutes. Meanwhile, the priest was studying his fair companion, and wondering who she might be. At length he inquired if she had ever been in Avon before.

"No," replied the girl. "I wish I had!"

"Haven't seen Pillette's house then? He's resident manager of the Ames mills. We can go a little out of our way and have a look at it."

A few minutes later they stood at the iron gate of the manager's residence, a massive, brown stone dwelling, set in among ancient trees in an estate of several acres, and surrounded by shrubs and bushes.

"Fine place, eh?" remarked the priest.

"Beautiful," replied Carmen. "Does he know all about those tenements down there?"

"Ah, that he does; and cares less. And he knows all about the terrible hot air in his mills, and the flying lint that clogs the lungs of the babies working there. He sees them leave the place, dripping with perspiration, and go out into the zero temperature half naked. And when they go off with pneumonia, well he knows why; and cares less. He knows that the poor, tired workers in that great prison lose their senses in the awful noise and roar, and sometimes get bewildered and fall afoul of belts and cogs, and lose their limbs or lives. He knows; and doesn't care. So does Mr. Ames. And he wouldn't put safety devices over his machines, because he doesn't care. I've written to him a dozen times about it. But--

"And then Pillette," he continued; "I've asked him to furnish his hands with decent drinking water. They work ten and twelve hours in that inferno, and when they want to drink, why, all they have is a barrel of warm water, so covered with lint that it has to be pushed aside in order to get at the water. Why, Pillette don't even give 'em change rooms! He won't give 'em decent toilet rooms! Says Mr. Ames can't afford it. Seems to me that when a man can give a ball and send out invitations on cards of solid gold, he can afford to give a thought to the thousands who have toiled and suffered in order to enable him to give such a ball, don't you?"

Carmen did. She had attended that reception. The memory came back now in hot, searing thoughts.

"Oh, he catches 'em coming and going!" the priest went on. "You see, he manipulates Congress so that a high tariff law is passed, protecting him from imported goods. Then he runs up the prices of his output. That hits his mill hands, for they have to pay the higher prices that the tariff causes. Oh, no, it doesn't result in increased wages to them. Ha! ha! Not a bit! They're squeezed both ways. He is the only one who profits by high tariff on cotton goods. See how it works?"

Yes, Carmen saw. She might not know that Ames periodically appeared before Congress and begged its protection--nay, threatened, and then demanded. She might not know that Senator Gossitch ate meekly from the great man's hand, and speciously represented to his dignified colleagues that the benefits of high protective duties were for "the people" of the United States. She might not know how Hood, employed to evade the laws enacted to hedge and restrain his master, bribed and bought, schemed and contrived, lobbied, traded, and manipulated, that his owner might batten on his blood-stained profits, while he kept his face turned away from the scenes of carnage, and his ears stopped against the piteous cries of his driven slaves. But she did know how needless it all was, and how easy, oh! how pitiably easy, it would be to remedy every such condition, would the master but yield but a modicum of his colossal, mesmeric selfishness. She did not know, she could not, that the master, Ames, made a yearly profit from his mills of more than two hundred per cent. But she did know that, were he less stupidly greedy, even to the extent of taking but a hundred per cent profit, he would turn a flood of sunshine into hundreds of sick, despairing, dying souls.

"This is the place," she heard the priest say, his voice seeming to come from a long distance. "This is the Mission."

She stopped and looked about her. They were in front of an old, two-story building, decrepit and forbidding, but well lighted. While she gazed, the priest opened the door and bade her enter.

"This down here is the reading room," he explained. "The door is never locked. Upstairs is my office, and sleeping rooms for men. Also a stock of old clothes I keep on hand for 'em when I send 'em out to look for work. I've clothed an average of four men a day during the past year, and sent 'em out to look for jobs. I board 'em, and keep 'em going until they land something. Sometimes I have to lend 'em money. I just help 'em to help themselves. No, I never bother about a man's religion. Come up to my office."

Carmen climbed the rough steps to the floor above and entered the small but well-kept office of the priest.

"Now here," he said, with a touch of pride, "is my card-index. I keep tab on all who come here. When they get straightened up and go out to hunt work, I give 'em identification cards. Just as soon as I can get funds I'm going to put a billiard table back there and fit up a little chapel, so's the Catholic men who drift in here can attend service. You know, a lot of 'em don't have the nerve to go to a church. Too proud. But they'd attend Mass here."

Carmen looked at the man in admiration. Then a thought came to her. "We haven't either of us asked the other's name," she said.

The priest's eyes twinkled. "I've been dying to know yours," he replied. "I'm Father Magee, Daniel Magee. But the boys generally call me Danny. What shall I call you? Oh, give any name; it doesn't matter, just so's I'll know how to address you."

"I am Carmen Ariza. And I am from South America," said the girl simply. "Now sit down here. I want to talk to you. I have a lot to ask."

* * * * *

An hour later the girl rose from her chair. "I shall have to wait and visit the Hall another time," she said. "I must catch the eight-thirty back to the city. But--"

"I'll never see you go down this tough street to the depot alone!" averred the priest, reaching for his hat.

Carmen laughed. But she gratefully accepted the proffered escort. Two of Father Magee's assistants had come in meanwhile, and were caring for the few applicants below.

"You're right, Miss Carmen," the priest said, as they started for the train. "Mr. Ames must be reached. Perhaps you can do it. I can't. But I'll give you every assistance possible. It eats my heart out to see the suffering of these poor people!"

At eleven o'clock that night Carmen entered the office of the city editor of the Express. "Ned," she said, "I've been with Dante--no, Danny--in Inferno. Now I'm going to Washington. I want expense money--a good lot--so that I can leave to-morrow night."

Haynerd's eyes dilated as he stared at the girl. "Washington!" he ejaculated. "Well--! But what did you find down in Avon?"

"I'll write you a detailed report of my trip to-morrow. I'm going home now," she replied.

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Chapter 12

It is sometimes said of the man who toils at forge or loom in this great commonwealth that he is fast forgetting that Washington is something more significant to him than what is embraced in the definition of the gazetteers. Not so, however, of that class of the genus homo individualized in J. Wilton Ames. He leaned not upon such frail dependence as the Congressional Record for tempered reports of what goes on behind closed legislative doors; he went behind those doors himself. He needed not to yield his meekly couched desires to the law-builders whom his ballot helped select; he himself launched those legislators, and gave them their steering charts. But, since the interpretation of laws was to him vastly more important than their framing, he first applied himself to the selection of judges, and especially those of the federal courts. With these safely seated and instructed at home, he gave himself comfortably to the task of holding his legislators in Washington to the course he chose.

Carmen had not spent a day at the Capital before the significance of this fact to the common citizen swept over her like a tidal wave. If the people, those upon whom the stability of the nation rests, looked as carefully after appointments and elections as did Ames, would their present wrongs continue long to endure? She thought not. And after she had spent the day with the Washington correspondent of the Express, a Mr. Sands, who, with his young wife, had just removed to the Capital, she knew more with respect to the mesmerism of human inertia and its baneful effects upon mankind than she had known before.

And yet, after that first day of wandering through the hallowed precincts of a nation's legislative halls, she sat down upon a bench in the shadow of the Capitol's great dome and asked herself the questions: "What am I here for, anyway? What can I do? Why have I come?" She had acted upon--impulse? No; rather, upon instinct. And instinct with her, as we have said, was unrestrained dependence upon her own thought, the thought which entered her mentality only after she had first prepared the way by the removal of every obstruction, including self.

At the breakfast table the second morning after her arrival in the city, Mr. Sands handed her a copy of the Express. Among the editorials was her full report upon conditions as she had found them in Avon, published without her signature. Following it was the editor's comment, merciless in its exposition of fact, and ruthless in its exposure of the cruel greed externalized in the great cotton industry in that little town.

Carmen rose from the table indignant and protesting. Hitt had said he would be wise in whatever use he made of her findings. But, though quite devoid of malignity, this account and its added comment were nothing less than a personal attack upon the master spinner, Ames. And she had sent another report from Washington last night, one comprising all she had learned from Mr. Sands. What would Hitt do with that? She must get in touch with him at once. So she set out to find a telegraph office, that she might check the impulsive publisher who was openly hurling his challenge at the giant Philistine.

When the message had gone, the girl dismissed the subject from her thought, and gave herself up completely to the charm of the glorious morning and her beautiful environment. For some time she wandered aimlessly about the city; then bent her steps again toward the Capitol.

At the window of a florist she stopped and looked long and lovingly at the gorgeous display within. In the midst of the beautiful profusion a single flower held her attention. It was a great, brilliant red rose, a kind that she had never seen before. She went in and asked for it.

"We call it the 'President' rose, Miss," said the salesman in response to her query. "It is quite new."

"I want it," she said simply.

And when she went out with the splendid flower burning on her bosom like living fire, she was glad that Hitt had not been there to see her pay two dollars for it.

The great Capitol seemed to fascinate her, as she stood before it a few moments later. The spell of tradition enwrapped her. The mighty sentiments and motives which had actuated the framers of the Constitution seemed to loom before her like monuments of eternal stone. Had statesmanship degenerated from that day of pure patriotism into mere corruption? Mr. Sands would have her so believe.

"The people!" he had exclaimed in scoffing tones. "Why, my dear girl, the people of your great State are represented in the national Senate by--whom? By nobody, I say. By the flies on the panes; by the mice in the corners; by the god, perhaps, to whom the chaplain offers his ineffectual prayers; but not by men. No; one of your Senators represents a great railroad; the other an express company! The people? Those Senators know no such ridiculous creature as 'the people'!"

She turned from the Capitol, and for an hour or more strolled in the brilliant sunlight. "An economic disease," she murmured at length. "That's what it is. And, like all disease, it is mental. It is a disease of the human conscience. It comes from the fear of separation from good. It all reduces to the belief of separation from God--the belief that upon men's own human efforts depend all the happiness and satisfaction they can have. Why, I have never known anything but happiness and abundance! And yet, I have never made a single effort to acquire them!" For the girl saw not the past vicissitudes of her life except as shadowy mists, which dimmed not the sun of her joy.

"Take care!" cried a loud voice close to her.

There was a tramping of horses' feet. A great, dark body swept past. It struck her, and brushed her to one side. She strove to hold herself, but fell.

The man and his companion were off their horses instantly, and assisted the girl to her feet.

"Are you hurt?" asked the one who had been riding ahead. "I called to you, but you didn't seem to hear."

"Not a bit!" laughed the girl, recovering her breath, and stooping to brush the dust from her dress. "I was dreaming, as usual."

"Well, I'm glad to hear that! It was a close shave! I'm mighty sorry! Are you sure you're all right? Perhaps you had better come in with us."

The girl raised her head and looked into his face with a bright smile. The man's anxious expression slowly changed into one of wonder, and then of something quite different. The girl's long, thick hair had been loosened by the fall, and was hanging about her shoulders. Framed in the deep brown profusion was the fairest face he had ever looked upon; the most winning smile; the most loving, compassionate glance.

"You'll have to come in now, and let the maid help you," he said firmly. "And I'll send you home in an auto. May I ask where you live?"

"New York," replied Carmen, a little confused as she struggled vainly with her hair. "Oh, I'm not going to fuss with it any more!" she suddenly exclaimed. "Yes, I'll go with you, and let the maid do it up. Isn't it long!"

She glanced about her, and then up the avenue toward which the men had been riding. A flush suddenly spread over her face, and she turned and looked searchingly at the man.

"You--you--live--in--there?" she stammered, pointing toward the distant house. "And you are--"

"Yes," he replied, coming to her assistance, but evidently greatly enjoying her embarrassment, "I am the President."

Carmen gave a little gasp. "Oh!"

Then her hand stole mechanically to the rose flaming upon her bosom. "I--I guess I know why I bought this now," she said softly. Quickly unpinning it, she extended it to the man. "I was bringing it to you, wasn't I?" she laughed. "It's a 'President' rose."

The picture was one that would have rejoiced an artist: the simple girl, with her tumbled hair and wonderful face, standing there in the glorious sunlight, holding out a single rose to the chief executive of a great nation.

The President bowed low and took the proffered flower. "I thank you," he said. "It is beautiful. But the one who gives it is far more so."

Then he bade his companion take the two horses to the stable, and motioned to Carmen to accompany him.

"I was just returning from my morning ride," he began again, "when you happened--"

"Things never happen," interrupted the girl gently.

He looked at her with a little quizzical side glance. "Then you didn't happen to be in the way?" he said, smiling.

"No," she returned gravely. "I was obeying the law of cause and effect."

"And the cause?" he pursued, much interested.

"A desire to see you, I guess. Or, perhaps, the necessity of seeing you. And because I wanted to see you in the interests of good, why, evil seemed to try to run over me."

"But why should you wish to see me?" he continued, greatly wondering.

"Because you are the head of a wonderful nation. Your influence is very great. And you are a good man."

He studied her for a moment. Then:

"You came down from New York to talk with me?" he asked.

"I think I came all the way from South America to see you," she said.

"South America!"

"Yes, Colombia."

"Colombia! There is a revolution in progress down there now. Did you come to see me about that? I can do nothing--"

The girl shook her head. "No," she said, "it's to prevent a revolution here in your own country that I think I have come to see you."

They had by now reached the door of the Executive Mansion. Entering, the President summoned a maid, and turned the big-eyed girl over to her. "Bring her to my office," he directed, "when she is ready."

A little later the nameless girl from Simití again stood before the President of the United States.

"I have an important conference at ten," he said, glancing at a clock. "But we have a few minutes before that time. Will you--may I ask you to tell me something about yourself?" he ventured. "You are feeling all right? No bad effects from the accident?" he added, looking apprehensively at her while he set out a chair.

The girl drew the chair close to his desk and sat down. "I know nothing about accidents," she said quietly. Then, turning quite from that topic, she drew the President quickly into her thought and carried him off with her as on a magic carpet.

The man listened in rapt attention. From time to time he turned and stared at his strange visitor. At other times he made notes of points which impressed him. Once he interrupted, when she made reference to her past life. "This priest, Josè de Rincón, might he not have been imprisoned as a political offender?"

"I do not know," the girl replied tenderly. "My foster-father, Rosendo, did not mention him in the two letters which I have received."

The President nodded; and the girl went rapidly on. Soon she was deep in the problem presented by Avon.

But at the mention of that town, and of its dominating genius, the President seemed to become nervous. At length he raised a hand, as if to end the interview.

"I fear I can do nothing at present," he said with an air of helplessness. "My influence is quite limited."

"But," she protested, "you have the public welfare at heart. And can you not see that public welfare is the welfare of each individual?"

"I know Mr. Ames well," the President replied, somewhat irrelevantly. "He, like all men of great wealth, presents a serious problem, doubtless. But he himself, likewise, is confronted by problems of very trying natures. We must give him time to work them out."

The girl sighed. "It's like getting at the essence of Christianity," she said. "The world has had nearly two thousand years in which to do that, but it hasn't made much of a start as yet. How much time does Mr. Ames require? And how many more lives must he sacrifice?"

"But," the President resumed reflectively, "after all, it is the people who are wholly responsible for the conditions which exist among them. They have the means of remedying every economic situation, the ballot. It is really all in their hands, is it not? They elect their public officers, their judges, and their lawmakers."

Again the girl sighed. "You too," she said, "take refuge in the cant of the age. Yes, the people do try to elect public servants; but by some strange anomaly the servant becomes master the moment he enters the door of office. His thought then centers upon himself. And then they, and you, sit helplessly back and cry, No use! And if the people rise, their servants meet them with a hail of lead. It's really childishly ridiculous, isn't it? when you stop to consider it seriously."

She leaned her elbows upon the desk, and sat with chin in her hands, looking squarely into the eyes of the President.

"So you, the head of this great nation, confess to utter helplessness," she slowly said. "But you don't have to."

A servant entered at that moment with a card. The President glanced at it, and bade him request the caller to wait a few moments. Then, after some reflection:

"The people will always--"

The door through which the servant had passed was abruptly thrown open, and a harsh voice preceded the entrance of a huge bulk.

"I am not accustomed to being told to wait, Mr. President," said the ungracious voice. "My appointment was for ten o'clock, and I am here to keep it."

Then the newcomer stopped abruptly, and stared in amazement at the young girl, sitting with her elbows propped upon the desk, and her face close to that of the President.

The latter rose, flushed and angry. But Ames did not notice him. His attention was centered upon the girl who sat looking calmly up at him. A dark, menacing scowl drew his bushy eyebrows together, and made the sinister look which mantled his face one of ominous import to the person upon whom it fell.

Carmen was the first to break the tense silence. With a bright smile illuming her face she rose and held out a hand to the giant before her. "Good morning, Mr. Ames," she said. "We meet pretty often, don't we?"

Ames ignored both the greeting and the extended hand. Turning upon the President, he said sharply: "So, the Express seeks aid in the White House, eh?"

"No, Mr. Ames," said Carmen quickly, answering for the President. "It seeks to aid the White House."

Ames turned to the girl. "Might I ask," he said in a tone of mordant sarcasm, "how you learned that I was to be here this morning? I would like to employ your methods of espionage in my own business."

"I would give anything if you would employ my methods in your business," returned the girl gently.

The President looked in embarrassment from one to the other. "I think, Miss Carmen," he said, "that we must consider our interview ended. This next hour belongs by appointment to Mr. Ames."

A peculiar expression had come into Ames's features. His thought had been working rapidly. Here was an opportunity for a telling stroke. He would play it. His manner suddenly became more gracious.

"Let her remain, Mr. President," he said in a tone pregnant with meaning. "I am glad to have a representative of the New York press with us to hear you express your attitude toward the cotton schedule."

The President caught the insinuation. His hand was to be forced! His indignation mounted, but he checked it.

"The schedule has been reported out of committee," he replied briefly. "It is now before Congress."

"I am aware of that," said Ames. "And your influence with Congress in regard to it?"

"I am studying the matter, Mr. Ames," returned the President slowly.

"Shall the Avon mills be closed pending a decision? Or, on the assumption that Congress will uphold the altered schedule, must the Spinners' Association begin immediate retrenchment? As president of that Association, I ask for instructions."

"My influence with Congress, as you well know, Mr. Ames, is quite limited," replied the hectored executive.

"It is not a question of the amount of your influence with that body, Mr. President," returned Ames coldly, "but of how you will employ that which you have."

Silence lay upon them all for some moments. Then Ames resumed:

"I would remind you," he remarked with cruel insinuation, "that--or," glancing at the girl, "perhaps I should not make this public." He paused and awaited the effect of his significant words upon the President. Then, as the latter remained silent, he went on evenly:

"Second-term prospects, you are aware, are often very greatly influenced by public facts regarding the first election. Of course we are saying nothing that the press might use, but--well, you must realize that there is some suspicion current as to the exact manner in which your election was--"

"I think you wish to insinuate that my election was due to the Catholic vote, which you controlled in New York, and to your very generous campaign contributions, do you not? I see no reason for withholding from the press your views on the subject."

"But, my friend, this is an age of investigation, and of suspicion toward all public officials. And such rumors wouldn't look well on the front pages of the press throughout the country. Of course, our young friend here isn't going to mention them to her superiors; but, nevertheless, they ought to be suppressed at once. Their effect upon your second-term prospects would be simply annihilating. Now I am in a position to greatly assist in the matter of--well, in fact, I have already once offered my aid to the Express. And I stand ready now to join with it in giving the lie to those who are seeking to embarrass the present administration. Miss Carmen is with us--"

"Mr. Ames," the girl quietly interrupted, "I wish you were with us."

"But, my dear girl, have I--"

"For then there would be no more suffering in Avon," she added.

"Ha! Then it was you who wrote that misleading stuff in the Express, eh? I might have known it! May I ask," he added with a contemptuous sneer, "by whose authority you have visited the houses occupied by my tenants, without my permission or knowledge? I take it you were down there, although the cloudy weather must have quite dimmed your perception."

"Yes," she answered in a low voice, "I have been there. And it was very cloudy. Yes, I visited your charnel houses and your cemeteries. I saw your victims. I held their trembling hands, and stroked their hot brows. I fed them, and gave them the promise that I would plead their cause with you."

"Humph! But you first come here to--"

"It was with no thought of seeing you that I came to Washington, Mr. Ames. If I cross your path often, it must be for a purpose not yet revealed to either of us. Perhaps it is to warn you, to awaken you, if not too late, to a sense of your desperate state."

"My desperate state!"

"Yes. You are drunk, you know, drunk with greed. And such continuous drunkenness has made you sick unto death. It is the same dread disease of the soul that the wicked Cortez told the bewildered Mexicans he had, and that could be cured only with gold. You--you don't see, Mr. Ames, that you are mesmerized by the evil which is always using you."

She stood close to the huge man, and looked straight up into his face. He remained for a moment motionless, yielding again to that fascination which always held him when in her presence, and of which he could give no account to himself. That slight, girlish figure--how easily he could crush her!

"But you couldn't, you know," she said cryptically, as she shook her head.

"Couldn't what?" he demanded.

"Crush me."

He recoiled a step, struck by the sudden revelation that the girl had read his thought.

"You see, Mr. Ames," she continued, "what a craven error is before truth. It makes a coward of you, doesn't it? Your boasted power is only a mesmerism, which you throw like a huge net over your victims. You and they can break it, if you will."

"Miss Carmen!" exclaimed the President. "We really must consider our interview ended. Let us make an appointment for another day."

"I guess the appointment was made for to-day," the girl said softly. "And by a higher power than any of us. Mr. Ames is the type of man who is slowly turning our Republican form of government into a despotism of wealth. He boasts that his power is already greater than a czar's. You bow before it; and so the awful monster of privilege goes on unhampered, coiling its slimy tentacles about our national resources, our public utilities, and natural wealth. I--I can't see how you, the head of this great nation, can stand trembling by and see him do it. It is to me incomprehensible."

The President flushed. He made as if to reply, but restrained himself. Carmen gave no indication of leaving. A stern look then came into the President's face. He stood for a few minutes in thought. Then he turned again to his desk and sat down.

"Please be seated," he said, "both of you. I don't know what quarrel there is between you two, and I am not interested in it. But you, Miss Carmen, represent the press; Mr. Ames, business. The things which have been voiced here this morning must remain with us alone. Now let us see if we can not meet on common ground. Is the attitude of your newspaper, Miss Carmen, one of hostility toward great wealth?"

"The Express raises its voice only against the folly and wickedness of the human mind, not against personality," replied the girl.

"But you are attacking Mr. Ames."

"No. We attack only the human thought which manifests in him. We oppose the carnal thought which expresses itself in the folly, the madness of strife for excessive wealth. It is that strife that makes our hospitals and asylums a disgraceful necessity. It makes the immigrant hordes of Europe flock here because they are attracted by the horrible social system which fosters the growth of great fortunes and makes their acquisition possible. Our alms-houses and prisons increase in number every year. It is because rich men misuse their wealth, trample justice under foot, and prostitute a whole nation's conscience."

"But the rich need not do that. They do not all--"

"It is a law of human thought," said Carmen in reply, "that mankind in time become like that which has absorbed their attention. Rich men obey this law with utmost precision. They acquire the nature and character of their god, gold. They rapidly grow to be like that which they blindly worship. They harden like their money. They grow metallic, yellow, calloused, unchanging, and soulless, like the coins they heap up. There is the great danger to our country, Mr. President. And it is against the human thought that produces such beings--thought stamped with the dollar mark--that the Express opposes itself."

She hesitated, and looked in the direction of Ames. Then she added:

"Their features in time reveal to the world their metallic thought. Their veins shrivel with the fiery lust of gold. Their arteries harden. And then, at last, they crumble and sink into the dust of which their god is made. And still their memories continue to poison the very sources of our national existence. You see," she concluded, "there is no fool so mired in his folly as the man who gives his soul for great wealth."

"A very enjoyable little sermon, preached for my benefit, Miss Carmen," interposed Ames, bowing to her. "And now if you have finished excoriating my poor character," he continued dryly, "will you kindly state by whose authority you publish to the world my affairs?"

"God's authority, Mr. Ames," returned the girl gently.

"Bah! The maudlin sentimentalism of such as you make us all suffer!" he exclaimed with a gesture of disgust. "Hadn't we better sing a hymn now? You're obsessed with your foolish religious notions! You're running amuck! You'll be wiser in a few years, I hope."

The girl reflected. "And may I ask, Mr. Ames, by what right you own mines, and forests, and lands? Divine right, I suppose."

"By the divine right of law, most assuredly," he retorted.

"And you make the law. Yes, divine right! I have learned," she continued, turning to the President, "that a bare handful of men own or control all the public utilities of this great country. It doesn't seem possible! But," abruptly, "you believe in God, don't you?"

He nodded his head, although with some embarrassment. His religion labored heavily under political bias.

She looked down at the floor, and sat silent for a while. "Divine right," she began to murmur, "the fetish of the creatures made rich by our man-made social system! 'The heavens are thine, the earth also is thine: as for the world and the fullness thereof, thou hast founded them.' But, oh, what must be the concept of God held by the rich, a God who bestows these gifts upon a few, and with them the privilege and divine consent to oppress and crush their fellow-men! What a low order of intelligence the rich possess! An intelligence wherein the sentiments of love and justice have melted into money!"

"Mr. President," put in Ames at this juncture, "I think we have spent quite enough time moralizing. Suppose you now indicate your attitude on the cotton tariff. I'd like to know what to expect."

Carmen glanced quickly up. Her sparkling eyes looked right into the President's. A smile wreathed her mouth. "I admire the man," she said, "who dares to stand for the right in the face of the great taboo! There are few men nowadays who stand for anything in particular."

"Look here!" exclaimed Ames, aware now that he had made a mistake in permitting the girl to remain, "I wish my interview to be with you alone, Mr. President."

Carmen rose. "I have embarrassed you both, haven't I?" she said. "I will go. But first--"

She went to Ames and laid a hand on his arm. "I wish--I wish I might awaken you," she said gently. "There is no victim at Avon in so desperate a state as you. More gold will not cure you, any more than more liquor can cure a slave to strong drink. You do not know that you are hourly practicing the most despicable form of robbery, the wringing of profits which you do not need out of the dire necessities of your fellow-beings."

She stopped and smiled down into the face of the man. His emotions were in a whirl. This girl always dissected his soul with a smile on her face.

"I wish I might awaken you and your poor victims by showing you and them that righteousness makes not for a home in the skies, but for greater happiness and prosperity for everybody right here in this world. Don't you really want the little babies to have enough to eat down there at Avon? Do you really want the President to support you in the matter of the cotton schedule, and so increase the misery and sorrow at your mills? You don't know, do you? that one's greatest happiness is found only in that of others." She stood looking at him for a few moments, then turned away.

The President rose and held out his hand to her. She almost laughed as she took it, and her eyes shone with the light of her eager, unselfish desire.

"I--I guess I'm like Paul," she said, "consumed with zeal. Anyway, you'll wear my rose, won't you?"

"Indeed I will!" he said heartily.

"And--you are not a bit afraid about a second term, are you? As for party principle, why, you know, there is only one principle, God. He is the Christ-principle, you know, and that is way above party principle."

Under the spell of the girl's strange words every emotion fled from the men but that of amazement.

"Righteousness, you know, is right-thinking. And that touches just that about which men are most chary, their pocketbooks."

She still held his hand. Then she arched her brows and said naïvely: "You will find in yesterday's Express something about Avon. You will not use your influence with Congress until you have read it, will you?" And with that she left the room.

A deep quiet fell upon the men, upon the great executive and the great apostle of privilege. It seemed to the one that as the door closed against that bright presence the spirit of night descended; the other sat wrapped in the chaos of conflicting emotions in which she always left him.

Suddenly the President roused up. "Who is she?" he asked.

"She's the bastard daughter of a negro priest," replied Ames in an ugly tone.

"What--she? That beautiful girl--! I don't believe it!"

"By God, she is!" cried the thoroughly angered Ames, bringing a huge fist down hard upon the desk. "And I've got the proof! And, what's more, she's head over heels in love with another renegade priest!

"But that's neither here nor there," he continued savagely. "I want to know what you are going to do for us?"

"I--I do not see, Mr. Ames, that I can do anything," replied the President meditatively.

"Well--will you leave the details to us, and do as we tell you then?" the financier pursued, taking another tack.

The President hesitated. Then he raised his head. "You say you have proof?" he asked.

"Proof?"

"Yes--about the girl, you--"

"Damn the girl!" almost shouted Ames. "I've got proofs that will ruin her, and you too--and, by God, I'll use 'em, if you drive me to it! You seem to forget that you were elected to do our bidding, my friend!"

The President again lapsed into silence. For a long time he sat staring at the floor. Then he looked up. "It was wonderful," he said, "wonderful the way she faced you, like David before Goliath! There isn't a vestige of fear in her make-up. I--we'll talk this matter over some other time, Mr. Ames," he finished, rising abruptly.

"We'll talk it over now!" roared Ames, his self-control flying to the winds. "I can ruin you--make your administration a laughing-stock--and plunge this country into financial panic! Do you do as I say, or not?"

The President looked the angry man squarely in the eyes. "I do not," he answered quietly. "Good morning."

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter 13

"It's corking! Simply corking!" cried Haynerd, when he and Hitt had finished reading Carmen's report on her first few days in Washington. "Makes a fellow feel as if the best thing Congress could do would be to adjourn for about fifty years, eh? Such freak legislation! But she's a wonder, Hitt! And she's booming the Express to the skies! Say, do you know? she's in love, that girl is! That's why she is so--as the Mexicans say--simpático."

"Eh? In love!" exclaimed Hitt. "Well, not with you, I hope!"

"No, unfortunately," replied Haynerd, assuming a dejected mien, "but with that Rincón fellow--and he a priest! He's got a son down in Cartagena somewhere, and he doesn't write to her either. She's told Sid the whole story, and he's working it up into a book during his odd moments. But, say," turning the conversation again into its original channel, "how much of her report are we going to run? You know, she tried to head us off. Doesn't want to attack Ames. Ha! ha! As if she hadn't already attacked him and strewn him all over the field!"

"We'll have to be careful in our allusions to the President," replied Hitt. "I'll rewrite it myself, so as not to offend her or him. And I--but, by George! her reports are the truth, and they rightfully belong to the people! The Express is the avowed servant of the public! What she finds out belongs to all. I see no reason for concealing a thing. Did I tell you that I had two inquiries from Italian and German papers, asking permission to translate her reports into their own columns?"

"No? Jerusalem! We're becoming famous! Did you wire her to see Gossitch and Mall?"

"Yes, and Logue, as well as others. And I've put dozens of senators and congressmen on our mailing list, including the President himself. I've prepared letters for each one of them, calling attention to the girl and her unique reports. She certainly writes in a fascinating vein, doesn't she? Meanwhile, she's circulating around down there and advertising us in the best possible manner. We're a success, old man!" he finished, slapping the city editor roundly upon the back.

"Humph!" growled the latter. "Confine your enthusiasm to words, my friend. Say, what did you do about that liquid food advertisement?"

"Discovered that it was beer," replied Hitt, "and turned it firmly down."

"Well, isn't beer a food? Not that we care to advertise it, but--"

Hitt laughed. "When that fellow Claus smoothly tried to convince me that beer was a food, I sent a sample of his stuff to the Iles chemical laboratory for analysis. They reported ninety-four per cent water, four per cent alcohol--defined now as a poisonous drug--and about two per cent of possible food substance. If the beer had been of the first grade there wouldn't have been even the two per cent of solids. You know, I couldn't help thinking of what Carmen said about the beer that is advertised in brown bottles to preserve it from the deleterious effects of light. Light, you know, starts decay in beer. Well, light, according to Fuller, is 'God's eldest daughter.' Emerson says it is the first of painters, and that there is nothing so foul that intense light will not make it beautiful. Light destroys fermentation. Thus the light of truth destroys the fermentation which is supposed to constitute the human mind and body. So light tries to purify beer by breaking it up. The brewers have to put it into brown bottles to preserve its poisonous qualities. As Carmen says, beer simply can't stand the light. No evil can stand the light. Remarkable, isn't it?"

"Humph! It's astonishing that so many so-called reputable papers will take their advertising stuff. It's just as bad as patent medicine ads."

"Yes. And I note that the American public still spend their annual hundred million dollars for patent medicine dope. Most of this is spent by women, who are largely caught by the mail-order trade. I learned of one exposure recently made where it was found that a widely advertised eye wash was composed of borax and water. The cost was somewhere about five cents a gallon, and it sold for a dollar an ounce. Nice little profit of some two hundred and fifty thousand per cent, and all done by the mesmerism of suggestive advertising. Shrewd business, eh? Nice example in morality. Speaking of parasites on society, Ames is not the only one!"

"And yet those fellows howl and threaten us with the boycott because we won't advertise their lies and delusions. It's as bad as ecclesiastical intolerance!"

Carmen spent a week in Washington. Then she returned to New York and went directly to Avon. What she did there can only be surmised by a study of her reports to Hitt, who carefully edited them and ran them in the Express. Again, after several days, she journeyed back to Washington. Her enthusiasm was boundless; her energy exhaustless; her industry ceaseless; and her persistency doggedly unshakable. In Washington she made her way unhindered among those whom she deemed essential to the work which she was doing. Doubtless her ability to do this and to gain an audience with whomsoever she might choose was in great part due to her beauty and charming simplicity, her grace of manner, and her wonderful and fearless innocence, combined with a mentality remarkable for its matured powers. Hitt and Haynerd groaned over her expenses, but promptly met them.

"She's worth it," growled the latter one day. "She's had four different talks with the President! How on earth do you suppose she does it? And how did she get Mall and Logue to take her to dinner and to the theater again and again? And what did she do to induce that doddering old blunderbuss, Gossitch, to tell her what Ames was up to? I'll bet he made love to her! How do you suppose she found out that Ames was hand in glove with the medical profession, and working tooth and nail to help them secure a National Bureau of Health? Say, do you know what that would do? It would foist allopathy upon every chick and child of us! Make medication, drugging, compulsory! Good heavens! Have we come to that in this supposedly free country? By the way, Hitt, Doctor Morton has been let out of the University. Fired! He says Ames did it because of his association with us. What do you think of that?"

"I think, my friend," replied Hitt, "that it is a very serious matter, and one that impinges heavily upon the rights of every one of us, when a roaring lion like Ames is permitted to run loose through our streets. Can nothing stop him!"

"I've centered my hopes in Carmen," sighed Haynerd. "She's my one last bet. If she can't stop him, then God himself can't!"

Hitt turned and went into his office. A few moments later he came out again and handed an opened letter to Haynerd. "Some notes she's sent from Washington. Mentions the National Bureau of Health project. It hasn't escaped her, you see. Say, will you tell me where she picks up her information?"

"The Lord gives it to her, I guess," said Haynerd, glancing over the letter. "What's this?"

"'Reverend Borwell and Doctor Siler are down here lobbying for the National Bureau of Health bill. Also, Senator Gossitch dropped a remark to me yesterday which makes me believe that he and other Senators have been approached by Tetham with reference to sending an American ambassador to the Vatican. Mr. Ames favors this.'"

Haynerd handed the letter back to Hitt and plunged into the papers on his desk. "Don't say another word to me!" he exclaimed. "This country's going stark, staring mad! We're crazy, every mother's son of us!"

"It's the human mind that is crazy, Ned, because it is wholly without any basis of principle," returned Hitt with a sigh.

* * * * *

"Doctor Siler! I beg your pardon!"

"Eh? Why, Miss Carmen!" exclaimed that worthy person, looking up from the gutter, whither he had hastened after his silk hat which had been knocked off by the encounter with the young girl who had rounded the corner of Ninth street into Pennsylvania avenue and plunged full into him.

"Oh, I'm so sorry, Doctor! I was coming from the Smithsonian Institution, and I guess--"

"Don't mention it, Miss Carmen. It's a privilege to have my hat knocked off by such a radiant creature as you."

"But it was so stupid of me! Dreaming again! And I want to offer my--"

"Look here, Miss Carmen, just offer yourself as my guest at luncheon, will you? That will not only make amends, but place me hopelessly in your debt."

"Indeed I will!" exclaimed the girl heartily. "I was on my way to a restaurant."

"Then come with me. I've got a little place around the corner here that would have made Epicurus sit up nights inditing odes to it."

The girl laughed merrily, and slipped her arm through his. A few minutes later they were seated at a little table in a secluded corner of the doctor's favorite chophouse.

"By the way, I met a friend of yours a few minutes ago," announced the doctor, after they had given their orders. "He was coming out of the White House, and--were you ever in a miniature cyclone? Well, that was Ames! He blew me right off the sidewalk! So angry, he didn't see me. That's twice to-day I've been sent to the gutter!" He laughed heartily over his experiences, then added significantly: "You and he are both mental cyclones, but producing diametrically opposite effects."

Carmen remained seriously thoughtful. The doctor went on chatting volubly. "Ames and the President don't seem to be pulling together as well as usual. The President has come out squarely against him now in the matter of the cotton schedule. Ames declares that the result will be a general financial panic this fall. By the way, Mr. Sands, the Express correspondent, seems to be getting mighty close to administration affairs these days. Where did he get that data regarding a prospective National Bureau of Health, do you suppose?"

"I gave it to him," was the simple reply.

The doctor dropped his fork, and stared at the girl. "You!" he exclaimed. "Well--of course you naturally would be opposed to it. But--"

"Tell me," she interrupted, "tell me candidly just what you doctors are striving for, anyway. For universal health? Are your activities all quite utilitarian, or--is it money and monopoly that you are after? It makes a lot of difference, you know, in one's attitude toward you. If you really seek the betterment of health, then you are only honestly mistaken in your zeal. But if you are doing this to make money--and I think you are--then you are a lot of rascals, deserving defeat."

"Miss Carmen, do you impugn my motives?" He laughed lightly at the thought.

"N--well--" She hesitated. He began to color slightly under her keen scrutiny. "Well," she finally continued, "let's see. If you doctors have made the curative arts effective, and if you really do heal disease, then I must support you, of course. But, while there is nothing quite so important to the average mortal as his health, yet I know that there is hardly anything that has been dealt with in such a bungling way. The art of healing as employed by our various schools of medicine to-day is the result of ages and ages of experimentation and bitter experience, isn't it? And its cost in human lives is simply incalculable. No science is so speculative, none so hypothetical, as the so-called science of medicine."

"But we have had to learn," protested the doctor.

"Do you realize, Doctor," she resumed, "that the teaching and preaching of disease for money is one of the greatest curses resting upon the world to-day? I never saw a doctor until I was on the boat coming to New York. And then I thought he was one of the greatest curiosities I had ever seen. I followed him about and listened to him talk to the passengers. And I learned that, like most of our young men, he had entered the practice of medicine under the pressure of dollars rather than altruism. Money is still the determining factor in the choice of a profession by our young men. And success and fortune in the medical profession, more than in any other, depend upon the credulity of the ignorant and helpless human mind."

"Do you deny that great progress has been made in the curative arts?" he demanded. "See what we have done with diphtheria, with typhoid, with smallpox, and malaria!"

"Surely, Doctor, you can not believe that the mere temporary removing of a disease is real healing! You render one lot of microbes innocuous, after thousands of years of experimentation, and leave mankind subject to the rest. Then you render another set harmless. Do you expect to go on that way, making set after set of microbes harmless to the human body, and thus in time, after millions of years, eradicate disease entirely? Do you think that people will then cease to die? All the time you are working only in matter and through material modes. Do you expect thereby to render the human sense of life immortal? I think a sad disappointment awaits you. Your patients get well, only to fall sick again. And death to you is still as inevitable as ever, despite your boasted successes, is it not so?"

He broke into a bantering laugh, but did not reply.

"Doctor, the human mind is self-inoculated. It suffers from auto-infection. It makes its own disease microbes. It will keep on making them, until it is educated out of itself, and taught to do better. Then it will give place to the real reflection of divine mind; and human beings will be no more. Why don't you realize this, you doctors, and get started on the right track? Your real work is in the mental realm. There you will find both cause and cure."

"Well, I for one have little respect for faith cure--"

"Nor I," she interposed. "Dependence upon material drugs, Doctor, is reliance upon the phenomena of the human mind. Faith cure is dependence upon the human mind itself, upon the noumenon, instead of the phenomenon. Do you see the difference? Hypnotism is mental suggestion, the suggestions being human and material, not divine truth. The drugging system is an outgrowth of the belief of life in matter. Faith cure is the belief of life and power inherent in the human mind. One is no higher than the other. The origin of healing is shrouded in mythology, and every step of its so-called progress has been marked by superstition, dense ignorance, and fear. The first doctor that history records was the Shaman, or medicine-man, whose remedies reflected his mental status, and later found apt illustration in the brew concocted by Macbeth's witches. And think you he has disappeared? Unbelievable as it may seem, it was only a short time ago that a case was reported from New York where the skin of a freshly killed black cat was applied as a remedy for an ailment that had refused to yield to the prescribed drugging! And only a few years ago some one applied to the Liverpool museum for permission to touch a sick child's head with one of the prehistoric stone axes there exhibited."

"That was mere superstition," retorted the doctor.

"True," said Carmen. "But materia medica is superstition incarnate. And because of the superstition that life and virtue and power are resident in matter, mankind have swallowed nearly everything known to material sense, in the hope that it would cure them of their own auto-infection. You remember what awful recipes Luther gave for disease, and his exclamation of gratitude: 'How great is the mercy of God who has put such healing virtue in all manner of muck!'"

"Miss Carmen," resumed the doctor, "we physicians are workers, not theorists. We handle conditions as we find them, not as they ought to be."

"Oh, no, you don't!" laughed the girl. "You handle conditions as the human, mortal mind believes them to be, that's all. You accept its ugly pictures as real, and then you try desperately through legislation to make us all accept them. Yet you would bitterly resent it if some religious body should try to legislate its beliefs upon you.

"Now listen, you doctors are rank materialists. Perhaps it is because, as Hawthorne puts it, in your researches into the human frame your higher and more subtle faculties are materialized, and you lose the spiritual view of existence. Your only remedy for diseased matter is more matter. And these material remedies? Why, ignorance and superstition have given rise to by far the larger number of remedies in use by you to-day! And all of your attempts to rationalize medicine and place it upon a systematic basis have signally failed, because the only curative property a drug has is the credulity of the person who swallows it. And that is a factor which varies with the individual."

"The most advanced physicians give little medicine nowadays, Miss Carmen."

"They are beginning to get away from it, little by little," she replied. "In recent years it has begun to dawn upon doctors and patients alike that the sick who recover do so, not because of the drugs which they have taken, but in spite of them! One of the most prominent of our contemporary physicians who are getting away from the use of drugs has said that eighty-five per cent of all illnesses get well of their own accord, no matter what may or may not be done for them. In a very remarkable article from this same doctor's pen, in which he speaks of the huge undertaking which physicians must assume in order to clear away the materia medica rubbish of the ages, he states that the greatest struggle which the coming doctor has on his hands is with drugs, and the deadly grip which they have on the confidence and affections both of the profession and of the public. Among his illuminating remarks about the drug system, I found two drastic statements, which should serve to lift the veil from the eyes of the chronic drug taker. These are, first, 'Take away opium and alcohol, and the backbone of the patent medicine business would be broken inside of forty-eight hours,' and, second, 'No drug, save quinine and mercury in special cases, will cure a disease.' In words which he quotes from another prominent physician, 'He is the best doctor who knows the worthlessness of most drugs.'

"The hundreds of drugs listed in books on materia medica I find are gradually being reduced in number to a possible forty or fifty, and one doctor makes the radical statement that they can be cut down to the 'six or seven real drugs.' Still further light has been thrown upon the debasing nature of the drugging system by a member of the Philadelphia Drug Exchange, in a recent hearing before the House Committee on municipal affairs right here. He is reported as saying that it makes little difference what a manufacturer puts into a patent medicine, for, after all, the effect of the medicine depends upon the faith of the user. The sick man who turns to patent medicines for relief becomes the victim of 'bottled faith.' If his faith is sufficiently great, a cure may be effected--and the treatment has been wholly mental! The question of ethics does not concern either the patent medicine manufacturer or the druggist, for they argue that if the sick man's faith has been aroused to the point of producing a cure, the formula of the medicine itself is of no consequence, and, therefore, if a solution of sugar and water sold as a cure for colds can stimulate the sufferer's faith to the point of meeting his need, the business is quite legitimate. 'A bunch of bottles and sentiment,' adds this member of the Drug Exchange, 'are the real essentials for working healing miracles.'"

"Say!" exclaimed the doctor, again sitting back and regarding her with amazement. "You have a marvelous memory for data!"

"But, Doctor, I am intensely interested in my fellow-men. I want to help them, and show them how to learn to live."

"So am I," he returned. "And I am doing all I can, the very best I know how to do."

"I guess you mean you are doing what you are prompted to do by every vagrant impulse that happens to stray into your mentality, aren't you?" she said archly. "You haven't really seriously thought out your way, else you would not be here now urging Congress to spread a blanket of ignorance over the human mind. If you will reflect seriously, if you will lay aside monetary considerations, and a little of the hoary prejudice of the ages, and will carefully investigate our present medical systems, you will find a large number of schools of medicine, bitterly antagonistic to one another, and each accusing the other of inferiority as an exact science, and as grossly ignorant and reprehensibly careless of life. But which of these warring schools can show the greatest number of cures is a bit of data that has never been ascertained. A recent writer says: 'As important as we all realize health to be, the public is receiving treatment that is anything but scientific, and the amount of unnecessary suffering that is going on in the world is certainly enough to make a rock shed tears.' He further says that, 'at least seventy-five per cent of the people we meet who are apparently well, are suffering from some chronic ailment that regular medical systems can not cure,' and that many of these would try further experimentation were it not for the criticism that is going on in the medical world regarding various curative systems. The only hope under the drugging system is that the patient's life and purse may hold out under the strain of trying everything until he can light upon the right thing before he reaches the end of the list."

"And do you include surgery in your general criticism?" he asked.

"Surgery is no less an outgrowth of the belief of sentient matter than is the drugging system," she replied. "It is admittedly necessary in the present stage of the world's thought; but it is likewise admitted to be 'the very uncertain art of performing operations,' at least ninety per cent of which are wholly unnecessary.

"You see," she went on, "the effect upon the moral nature of the sick man is never considered as rightfully having any influence upon the choice of the system to be employed. If Beelzebub can cast out demons, why not employ him? For, after all, the end to be attained is the ejection of the demon. And if God had not intended minerals and plants to be used as both food and medicine, why did He make them? Besides, man must earn his bread in some way under our present crude and inhuman social system, and if the demand for drugs exists we may be very sure it will be supplied by others, if not by ourselves. Again, the influence of commercialism as a determining factor in the choice of a profession, is an influence that works to keep many in the practice of a profession that they know to be both unscientific and harmful. The result is an inevitable lowering of ideals to the lust of material accumulation."

"Well!" he exclaimed. "You certainly are hard on us poor doctors! And we have done so much for you, too, despite your accusations. Think of the babies that are now saved from diphtheria alone!"

"And think of the children who are the victims of the medical mania!" she returned. "Think how they are brought up under the tyranny of fear! Fear of this and of that; fear that if they scratch a finger blood poisoning will deprive them of life; fear that eating a bit of this will cause death; or sitting in a breeze will result in wasting sickness! Isn't it criminal? As for diphtheria antitoxin, it is in the same class as the white of an egg. It contains no chemicals. It is the result of human belief, the belief that a horse that has recovered from diphtheria can never again be poisoned by the microbe of that disease. The microbe, Doctor, is the externalization in the human mentality of the mortal beliefs of fear, of life and power in matter, and of disease and death. The microbe will be subject, therefore, to the human mind's changing thought regarding it, always."

"Well then," said the doctor, "if people are spiritual, and if they really are a consciousness, as you say, why do we seem to be carrying about a body with us all the time--a body from which we are utterly unable to get away?"

"It is because the mortal mind and body are one, Doctor. The body is a lower stratum of the human mind. Hence, the so-called mind is never distinct from its body to the extent of complete separation, but always has its substratum with it. And, Doctor, the mind can not hold a single thought without that thought tending to become externalized--as Professor James tells us--and the externalization generally has to do with the body, for the mind has come to center all its hopes of happiness and pleasure in the body, and to base its sense of life upon it. The body, being a mental concept formed of false thought, passes away, from sheer lack of a definite principle upon which to rest. Therefore the sense of life embodied in it passes away with it. You know, the ancients had some idea of the cause of disease when they attributed it to demons, for demons at least are mental influences. But then, after that, men began to believe that disease was sent by God, either to punish them for their evil deeds, or to discipline and train them for paradise. Funny, isn't it? Think of regarding pain and suffering as divine agents! I don't wonder people die, do you? Humboldt, you know, said: 'The time will come when it will be considered a disgrace for a man to be sick, when the world will look upon it as a misdemeanor, the result of some vicious thinking.' Many people seem to think that thought affects only the brain; but the fact is that we think all over!"

"But look here," put in the doctor. "Here's a question I intended to ask Hitt the other night. He said the five physical senses did not testify truly. Well now, if, as you say, the eyes do not testify to disease, then they can't testify to cures either, eh?" He sat back with an air of triumph.

"Quite correct," replied Carmen. "The physical senses testify only to belief. In the case of sickness, they testify to false belief. In the case of a cure, they testify to a changed belief, to a belief of recovered health, that is all. It is all on the basis of human belief, you see."

"Eh? But--nerves feel--"

"Nerves, Doctor, like all matter, are externalizations of human thought. Can the externalization of thought talk back to thought? No. You are still on the basis of mere human belief."

At that moment the doctor leaned over and tapped upon the window to attract the attention of some one in the street. Carmen looked out and caught sight of a tall, angular man dressed in clerical garb. The man bowed pleasantly to the doctor, and cast an inquiring glance at the girl, then passed on.

"A priest?" inquired Carmen.

"Yes, Tetham," said the doctor.

"Oh, is that the man who maintains the lobby here at the Capital for his Church? I've heard about him. He--well, it is his business to see that members of his Church are promoted to political office, isn't it? He trades votes of whole districts to various congressmen in return for offices for strong church members. He also got the parochial schools of New York exempt from compulsory vaccination. The Express--"

"Eh? The Express has heard from him?" inquired the doctor.

"Yes. We opposed the candidate Mr. Ames was supporting for Congress. We also supported Mr. Wales in his work on the cotton schedule. And so we heard from Father Tetham. He is supporting the National Bureau of Health bill. He is working for the Laetare medal. He--"

"Say, Miss Carmen, will you tell me where you pick up your news? Really, you astonish me! Do you know something about everybody here in Washington?"

She laughed. "I have learned much here," she said, "about popular government as exemplified by these United States. The knowledge is a little saddening. But it is especially saddening to see our constitutional liberties threatened by this Bureau of Health bill, and by the Government's constant truckling to the Church of Rome. Doctor, can it be that you want to commit this nation to the business of practicing medicine, and to its practice according to the allopathic, or 'regular' school? The American Medical Association, with its reactionary policies and repressive tendencies, is making strenuous endeavors to influence Congress to enact certain measures which would result in the creation of such a Department of Health, the effect of which would be to monopolize the art of healing and to create a 'healing trust.' If this calamity should be permitted to come upon the American people, it would fall as a curtain of ignorance and superstition over our fair land, and shut out the light of the dawning Sun of Truth. It would mean a reversion to the blight and mold of the Middle Ages, in many respects a return in a degree to the ignorance and tyranny that stood for so many centuries like an impassable rock in the pathway of human progress. The attempt to foist upon a progressive people a system of medicine and healing which is wholly unscientific and uncertain in its effects, but which is admittedly known to be responsible for the death of millions and for untold suffering and misery, and then to say, 'Thou shalt be cured thereby, or not be cured at all,' is an insult to the intelligence of the Fathers of our liberties, and a crime upon a people striving for the light. It smacks of the Holy Inquisition: You accept our creed, or you shall go to hell--after we have broken you on the rack! Why, the thought of subjecting this people to years of further dosing and experimentation along the materialistic lines of the 'regular' school, of curtailing their liberties, and forcing their necks under the yoke of medical tyranny, should come to them with the insistence of a clarion call, and startle them into such action that the subtle evil which lurks behind this proposed legislative action would be dragged out into the light and exterminated! To permit commercialism and greed, the lust of mammon, and the pride of the flesh that expresses itself in the demand, 'Who shall be greatest?' to dictate the course of conduct that shall shape the destinies of a great people, is to admit the failure of free government, and to revert to a condition of mind that we had thought long since outgrown. To yield our dear-bought liberties to Italian ecclesiastics, on the other hand--well, Doctor, it is just unthinkable!"

"H'm! Well, at least you are delightfully frank with me. Yet you have the effect of making me feel as if--as if I were in some way behind a veil. That--"

"Well, the human mind is very decidedly behind a veil--indeed, behind many of them. And how can it see God through them? Mankind just grope about all their lives back of these veils, not knowing that God is right before them all the time. God has got to be everything, or else He will be nothing. With or without drugs, it is God 'who healeth all thy diseases.' The difficulty with physicians is that they are densely ignorant of what healing means, and so they always start with a dreadful handicap. They believe that there is something real to be overcome--and of course fail to permanently overcome it. Many of them are not only pitiably ignorant, but are in the profession simply to make money out of the fears and credulity of the people. Doctor, the physician of to-day is in no way qualified to handle the question of public health--especially those doctors who say: 'If you won't take our medicines we'll get a law passed that will make you take them.' To place the health of the people in their hands would be a terrible mistake. The agitation for a federal Department of Health is based upon motives of ignorance and intentional wrong. If the people generally knew this, they would rise in a body against it. Make what laws you wish for yourself, Doctor. The human mind is constantly occupied in the making of ridiculous laws and limitations. But do not attempt to foist your laws upon the people. Tell me, why all this agitation about teaching sex-hygiene in the public schools? Why not, for a change, teach Christianity? What would be the result? But even the Bible has been put out of the schools. And by whom? By your Church, that its interpretation may continue to be falsely made by those utterly and woefully ignorant of its true meaning!"

For some moments they continued their meal in silence. Then the girl took up the conversation again. "Doctor," she said, "will you come out from among them and be separate?"

He looked at her quizzically. "Oppose Ames?" he finally said.

"Ah, that is the rub, then! Yes, oppose ignorance and falsity, even though incarnate in Mr. Ames," she replied.

"He would ruin me!" exclaimed the doctor. "He ruins everybody who stands in his way! The cotton schedule has gone against him, and the whole country will have to suffer for it!"

"But how can he make the country suffer because he has been blocked in his colossal selfishness?" she asked.

"That I can not answer," said the doctor. "But I do know that he has intimated that there will be no cotton crop in this country next year."

"No cotton crop! Why, how can he prevent that?"

The doctor shook his head. "Mr. Ames stands as the claim of omnipotent evil," was his laconic reply.

And when the meal was ended, the girl went her way, pondering deeply. "No cotton crop! What--what did he mean?" But that was something too dark to be reported to the Express.

* * * * *

Three weeks from the day he had his brush with Carmen in the presence of the President, Ames, the great corruptionist, the master manipulator, again returned from a visit to Washington, and in a dangerous frame of mind. What might have been his mental state had he known that the train which drew his private car also brought Carmen back to New York, can only be conjectured. It was fortunate, no doubt, that both were kept in ignorance of that fact, and that, while the great externalization of the human mind's "claim" of business sulked alone in his luxurious apartments, the little follower after righteousness sat in one of the stuffy day coaches up ahead, holding tired, fretful babies, amusing restless children, and soothing away the long hours to weary, care-worn mothers.

When the financier's car drew into the station his valets breathed great sighs of relief, and his French chef and negro porter mopped the perspiration from their troubled brows, while silently offering peans of gratitude for safe delivery. When the surly giant descended the car steps his waiting footman drew back in alarm, as he caught his master's black looks. When he threw himself into the limousine, his chauffeur drew a low whistle and sent a timidly significant glance in the direction of the lackey. And when at last he flung open the doors of his private office and loudly summoned Hood, that capable and generally fearless individual quaked with dire foreboding.

"The Express--I want a libel suit brought against it at once! Draw it for half a million! File it in Judge Penny's court!"

"Yes, sir," responded the lawyer meekly. "The grounds?"

"Damn the grounds!" shouted Ames. Then, in a voice trembling with anger: "Have you read the last week's issues? Then find your grounds in them! Make that girl a defendant too!"

"She has no financial interest in the paper, sir. And, as for the reports which they have published--I hardly think we can establish a case from them--"

"What? With Judge Penny sitting? If you and he can't make out a case against them, then I'll get a judge and a lawyer who can! I want that bill filed to-morrow!" bringing his fist down upon the desk.

"Very well, sir," assented Hood, stepping back.

"Another thing," continued Ames, "see Judge Hanson and have the calling of the Ketchim case held in abeyance until I am ready for it. I've got a scheme to involve that negro wench in the trial, and drag her through the gutters! So, she's still in love with Rincón, eh? Well, we'll put a crimp in that little affair, I guess! Has Willett heard from Wenceslas?"

"Not yet, sir."

"I'll lift the scalp from that blackguard Colombian prelate if he tries to trick me! Has Willett found Lafelle's whereabouts?"

"No, sir. But the detectives report that he has been in Spain recently."

"Spain! What's he--up to there?" he exclaimed in a voice that began high and ended in a whisper.

He lapsed into a reflective mood, and for some moments his thoughts seemed to wander far. Then he pulled himself together and roused out of his meditations.

"You told Jayne that I would back the Budget to any extent, provided it would publish the stuff I sent it?"

"Yes, sir. He was very glad to accept your offer."

"Very well. You and Willett set about at once getting up daily articles attacking the Express. I want you to dig up every move ever made by Hitt, Haynerd, that girl, Waite, Morton, and the whole miserable, sneaking outfit! Rake up every scandal, every fact, or rumor, that is in any way associated with any of them. I want them literally cannonaded by the Budget! Hitt's a renegade preacher! Haynerd was a bum before he got the Social Era! Waite is an unfrocked priest! Miss Wall's father was a distiller! That girl--that girl is a--Did you know that she used to be in a brothel down in the red-light district? Well, she did! Great record the publishers of the Express have, eh? Now, by God! I want you and Jayne to bury that whole outfit under a mountain of mud! I'm ready to spend ten millions to do it! Kill 'em! Kill 'em all!"

"I think we can do it, Mr. Ames," returned the lawyer confidently.

"You've got to! Now, another matter: I'm out to get the President's scalp! He's got to go down! Begin with those New York papers which we can influence. I'll get Fallom and Adams over here for a conference. Meanwhile, think over what we'd better say to them. Our attacks upon the President must begin at once! I've already bought up a Washington daily for that purpose. They have a few facts now that will discredit his administration!"

"Very well, Mr. Ames. Ah--a--there is a matter that I must mention as soon as you are ready to hear it, Mr. Ames--regarding Avon. It seems that the reports which that girl has made have been translated into several languages, and are being used by labor agitators down there to stir up trouble. The mill hands, you know, never really understood what your profits were, and--well, they have always been quite ignorant, you know, regarding any details of the business. But now they think they have been enlightened--they think they see how the tariff has benefited you at their expense--and they are extremely bitter against you. That priest, Father Danny, has been doing a lot of talking since the girl was down there."

"By God!" cried Ames, rising from his chair, then sinking back again.

"You see, Mr. Ames," the lawyer continued, "the situation is fast becoming acute. The mill hands don't believe now that you were ever justified in shutting down, or putting them on half time. And, whether you reduce wages or not, they are going to make very radical demands upon you in the near future, unless I am misinformed. These demands include better working conditions, better tenements, shorter hours, and very much higher wages. Also the enforcement of the child labor law, I am sorry to say."

"They don't dare!" shouted Ames.

"But, after all, Mr. Ames, you know you have said that it would strengthen your case with Congress if there should be a strike at Avon."

"But not now! Not now!" cried Ames. "It would ruin everything! I am distinctly out of favor with the President--owing to that little negro wench! And Congress is going against me if I lose Gossitch, Logue, and Mall! That girl has put me in bad down there! Wales is beginning to threaten! By G--"

"But, Mr. Ames, she can be removed, can she not?"

"Violence would still further injure us. But--if we can drive the Express upon the shoals, and then utterly discredit that girl, either in the libel suit or the Ketchim trial, why, then, with a little show of bettering things at Avon, we'll get what we want. But we've got work before us. Say, is--is Sidney with the Express?" he added hesitatingly.

Hood started, and shot a look of mingled surprise and curiosity at his master. Was it possible that Ames--

"You heard my question, Mr. Hood?"

"I--I beg pardon! Yes, sir--Sidney is still with them. He--a--they say he has quite conquered his--his--"

"You mean, he's no longer a sot?" Ames asked brutally. "Out with it, man! Don't sit there like a smirking Chinese god!"

"Well, Mr. Ames, I learn that Sidney has been cured of his habits, and that the--that girl--did it," stammered the nervous lawyer.

Ames's mouth jerked open--and then snapped shut. Silence held him. His head slowly sank until his chin touched his breast. And as he sat thus enwrapped, Hood rose and noiselessly left the room.

Alone sat the man of gold--ah, more alone than even he knew. Alone with his bruised ambitions, his hectored egoism, his watery aims. Alone and plotting the ruin of those who had dared bid him halt in his mad, destroying career. Alone, this high priest of the caste of absolutism, of the old individualism which is fast hurrying into the realm of the forgotten. Alone, and facing a new century, with whose ideals his own were utterly, stubbornly, hopelessly discrepant.

Alone he sat, looking out, unmoved, upon the want and pain of countless multitudes gone down beneath the yoke of conditions which he had made too hard for them. Looking, unmoved, unhearing, upon the bitter struggles of the weak, the ignorant, the unskilled, the gross hewers of wood and drawers of water. Looking, and knowing not that in their piteous cry for help and light was sounded his own dire peril.

The door opened, and the office boy announced the chief stenographer of the great bank below. Ames looked up and silently nodded permission for the man to enter.

"Mr. Ames," the clerk began, "I--I have come to ask a favor--a great favor. I am having difficulty--considerable difficulty in securing stenographers, but--I may say--my greatest struggle is with myself. I--Mr. Ames, I can not--I simply can not continue to hire stenographers at the old wage, nine dollars a week! I know how these girls are forced to live. Mr. Ames, with prices where they are now, they can not live on that! May I not offer them more? Say, ten or twelve dollars to start with?"

Ames looked at him fixedly. "Why do you come to me with your request?" he asked coldly. "Your superior is Mr. Doan."

"Yes, sir, I know," replied the young man with hesitation. "But--I--did speak to him about it, and--he refused."

"I can do nothing, sir," returned Ames in a voice that chilled the man's life-current.

"Then I shall resign, Mr. Ames! I refuse to remain here and hire stenographers at that criminal wage!"

"Very well, sir," replied Ames in the same low, freezing tone. "Hand your resignation to Mr. Doan. Good day, sir."

Again the guardian of the sanctity of private property was left alone. Again, as he lapsed into dark revery, his thought turned back upon itself, and began the reconstruction of scenes and events long since shadowy dreams. And always as they built, the fair face of that young girl appeared in the fabric. And always as he retraced his course, her path crossed and crossed again his own. Always as he moved, her reflection fell upon him--not in shadow, but in a flood of light, exposing the secret recesses of his sordid soul.

He dwelt again upon the smoothness of his way in those days, before her advent, when that group of canny pirates sat about the Beaubien's table and laid their devious snares. It was only the summer before she came that this same jolly company had merged their sacred trust assets to draw the clouds which that autumn burst upon the country as the worst financial panic it had known in years. And so shrewdly had they planned, that the storm came unheralded from a clear sky, and at a time when the nation was never more prosperous.

He laughed. It had been rich fun!

And then, the potato scheme. They had wagered that he could not put it through. How neatly he had turned the trick, filled his pockets, and transformed their doubts into wondering admiration! It had been rare pleasure! Oh, yes, there had been some suffering, he had been told. He had not given that a thought.

And the Colombian revolution! How surprised the people of these United States would be some day to learn that this tropic struggle was in essence an American war! The smug and unthinkingly contented in this great country of ours regarded the frenzied combat in the far South as but a sort of opéra bouffe. What fools, these Americans! And he, when that war should end, would control navigation on the great Magdalena and Cauca rivers, and acquire a long-term lease on the emerald mines near Bogotá. The price? Untold suffering--countless broken hearts--indescribable, maddening torture--he had not given that a thought.

He laughed again.

But he was tired, very tired. His trip to Washington had been exhausting. He had not been well of late. His eyes had been bloodshot, and there had been several slight hemorrhages from the nose. His physician had shaken his head gravely, and had admonished him to be careful--

But why did that girl continue to fascinate him? he wondered. Why now, in all his scheming and plotting, did he always see her before him? Was it only because of her rare physical beauty? If he wrote or read, her portrait lay upon the page; if he glanced up, she stood there facing him. There was never accusation in her look, never malice, nor trace of hate. Nor did she ever threaten. No; but always she smiled--always she looked right into his eyes--always she seemed to say, "You would destroy me, but yet I love you."

God! What a plucky little fighter she was! And she fought him fairly. Aye, much more so than he did her. She would scorn the use of his methods. He had to admit that, though he hated her, detested her, would have torn her into shreds--even while he acknowledged that he admired her, yes, beyond all others, for her wonderful bravery and her loyal stand for what she considered the right.

He must have dozed while he sat there in the warm office alone. Surely, that hideous object now floating before his straining gaze, that thing resembling the poor, shattered Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, was not real! It was but a shadow, a flimsy thing of thought! And that woestricken thing there, with its tenuous arms extended toward him--was that Gannette? Heavens, no! Gannette had died, stark mad! But, that other shade--so like his wife, a few months dead, yet alive again! Whence came that look of horror in a face once so haughty! It was unreal, ghastly unreal, as it drifted past! Ah, now he knew that he was dreaming, for there, there in the light stood Carmen! Oh, what a blessed relief to see that fair image there among those other ghastly sights! He would speak to her--

But--God above! What was that? A woman--no, not Carmen--fair and--

Her white lips moved--they were transparent--he could see right through them--and great tears dropped from her bloodless cheeks when her accusing look fell upon him!

Slowly she floated nearer--she stopped before him, and laid a hand upon his shoulder--it was cold, cold as ice! He tried to call out--to rise--to break away--

And then, groaning aloud, and with his brow dripping perspiration, he awoke.

Hood entered, but stopped short when he saw his master's white face. "Mr. Ames! You are ill!" he cried.

Ames passed a hand across his wet forehead. "A--a little tired, that's all, I guess. What now?"

The lawyer laid a large envelope upon the desk. "It has come," he said. "There's a delegation of Avon mill hands in the outer office. Here are their demands. It's just what I thought."

Ames slowly took up the envelope. For a moment he hesitated. Again he seemed to see that smiling girl before him. His jaw set, and his face drew slowly down into an expression of malignity. Then, without examining its contents, he tore the envelope into shreds, and cast the pieces into the waste basket.

"Put them out of the office!" he commanded sharply. "Wire Pillette at once to discharge these fellows, and every one else concerned in the agitation! If those rats down there want to fight, they'll find me ready!"

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Chapter 14

The immense frame of J. Wilton Ames bent slightly, and the great legs might have been seen to drag a bit, as the man entered his private elevator the morning after his rejection of the mill hands' demands, and turned the lever that caused the lift to soar lightly to his office above. And a mouse--had the immaculate condition of his luxurious sanctum permitted such an alien dweller--could have seen him sink heavily into his great desk chair, and lapse into deep thought. Hood, Willett, and Hodson entered in turn; but the magnate gave them scant consideration, and at length waved them all away, and bent anew to his meditations.

Truth to tell--though he would not have owned it--the man was now dimly conscious of a new force at work upon him; of a change, slowly, subtly taking place somewhere deep within. He was feebly cognizant of emotions quite unknown; of unfamiliar sentiments, whose outlines were but just crystallizing out from the thick magma of his materialistic soul.

And he fought them; he hated them; they made him appear unto himself weak, even effeminate! His abhorrence of sentimentalism had been among the strongest of his life-characteristics; and yet, though he could not define it, a mellowing something seemed to be acting upon him that dull, bitterly cold winter morning, that shed a soft glow throughout his mental chambers, that seemed to touch gently the hard, rugged things of thought that lay within, and soften away their sharp outlines. He might not know what lay so heavily upon his thought, as he sat there alone, with his head sunk upon his breast. And yet the girl who haunted his dreams would have told him that it was an interrogation, even the eternal question, "What shall it profit a man--?"

Suddenly he looked up. The door had opened, he thought. Then he sat bolt upright and stared.

"Good morning, Mr. Ames. May I come in?"

Come in! Had ever such heavenly music touched his ears before! This was not another dream! The vision this time was real! He sprang to his feet. He would have held out his arms to her if he could.

And yet, how dared she come to him? How dared she, after what she had done? Was this fresh affrontery? Had she come again to flout him? To stand within the protection which her sex afforded and vivisect anew his tired soul? But, whatever her motives, this girl did the most daring things he had ever seen a woman do.

"Isn't it funny," she said, as she stood before him with a whimsical little smile, "that wherever I go people so seldom ask me to sit down!"

Ames sank back into his seat without speaking. Carmen stood for a moment looking about her rich environment; then drew up a chair close to him.

"You haven't the slightest idea why I have come here, have you?" she said sweetly, looking up into his face.

"I must confess myself quite ignorant of the cause of this unexpected pleasure," he returned guardedly, bending his head in mock deference, while the great wonder retained possession of him.

"Well," she went on lightly, "will you believe me when I tell you that I have come here because I love you?"

Aha! A dark suspicion sprang up within him. So this was an attack from a different quarter! Hitt and Haynerd had invoked her feminine wiles, eh?

Nonsense! With one blow the unfamiliar sentiment which had been shedding its influence upon him that morning laid the ugly suspicion dead at his feet. A single glance into that sweet face turned so lovingly up to his brought his own deep curse upon himself for his hellish thought.

"You know," she bubbled, with a return of her wonted airy gaiety, "I just had to run the gauntlet through guards and clerks and office boys to get here. Aren't you glad I didn't send in my card? For then you would have refused to see me, wouldn't you?"

"I would not!" he replied harshly. Then he repented his tone. "If I had known you were out there," he said more gently, "I'd have sent out and had you dragged in. I--I have wanted something this morning; and now I am sure it was--"

"Yes," she interrupted, taking the words out of his mouth, "you wanted me. I knew you would. You see, it's just absolutely impossible to oppose anybody who loves you. You know, that's the very method Jesus gave for overcoming our enemies--to love them, just love them to pieces, until we find that we haven't any enemies at all any more. Isn't it simple? My! Well, that's the way I've been doing with you--just loving you."

The man's brows knotted, and his lips tightened. Was this girl ridiculing him? Or was there aught but the deepest sincerity expressed in the face from which he could not take his eyes? Impossible! And yet, did ever human being talk so strangely, so weirdly, as she?

He bent a little closer to her. "Did you say that you loved me?" he asked. "I thought you looked upon me as a human monster." After all, there was a note of pathos in the question. Carmen laid her hand upon his.

"It's the real you that I love," she answered gently. "The monster is only human thought--the thought that has seemed to mesmerize you. But you are going to throw off the mesmerism, aren't you? I'll help you," she added brightly. "You're going to put off the 'old man' completely--and you're going to begin by opening yourself and letting in a little love for those poor people down at Avon, aren't you? Yes, you are!"

At the mention of the people of Avon his face became stern and dark. And yet she spoke of them alone. She had not mentioned the Beaubien, Miss Wall, the Express, nor herself. He noted this, and wondered.

"You see, you don't understand, Mr. Ames. You'll be, oh, so surprised some day when you learn a little about the laws of thought--even the way human thought operates! For you can't possibly do another person an injury without that injury flying back and striking you. It's a regular boomerang! You may not feel the effects of its return right away--but it does return, and the effects accumulate. And then, some day, when you least expect it, comes the crash! But, when you love a person, why, that comes back to you too; and it never comes alone. It just brings loads of good with it. It helps you, and everybody. Oh, Mr. Ames," she cried, suddenly rising and seizing both his hands, "you've just got to love those people down there! You can't help it, even if you think you can, for hate is not real--it's an awful delusion!"

It was not so much an appeal which the girl made as an affirmation of things true and yet to come. The mighty Thou shalt not! which Moses laid upon his people, when transfused by the omnipotent love of the Christ was transformed from a clanking chain into a silken cord. The restriction became a prophecy; for when thou hast yielded self to the benign influence of the Christ-principle, then, indeed, thou shalt not desire to break the law of God.

Carmen returned to her chair, and sat eagerly expectant. Ames groped within his thought for a reply. And then his mental grasp closed upon the words of Hood.

"They are very bitter against me--they hate me!" he retorted lamely.

"Ah, yes," she said quickly. "They reflect in kind your thought of them. Your boomerangs of greed, of exploitation, of utter indifference which you have hurled at them, have returned upon you in hatred. Do you know that hatred is a fearful poison? And do you know that another's hatred resting upon you is deadly, unless you know how to meet and neutralize it with love? For love is the neutralizing alkaloid."

"Love is--weakness," he said in a low tone. "That kind, at least."

"Love weakness! Oh! Why, there is no such mighty power in the whole universe as love! It is omnipotent! It is hatred that is weak!"

Ames made a little gesture of contempt. "We argue from different standpoints," he said. "I am a plain, matter-of-fact, cold-blooded business man. There is no love in business!"

"And that," she replied in a voice tinged with sadness, "is why business is such chaos; why there is so much failure, so much anxiety, fear, loss, and unhappiness in the business world. Mr. Ames, you haven't the slightest conception of real business, have you?"

She sat for a moment in thought. Then, brightly, "I am in business, Mr. Ames--?"

"Humph! I am forced to agree with you there! The business of attempting to annihilate me!"

"I am in the business of reflecting good to you, and to all mankind," she gently corrected.

"Then suppose you manifest your love for me by refraining from meddling further in my affairs. Suppose from now on you let me alone."

"Why--I am not meddling with you, Mr. Ames!"

"No?" He opened a drawer of the desk and took out several copies of the Express. "I am to consider that this is not strictly meddling, eh?" he continued, as he laid the papers before her.

"No, not at all," she promptly replied. "That's uncovering evil, so's it can be destroyed. All that evil, calling itself you and your business, has got to come to the surface--has got to come up to the light, so that it can be--"

"Ah! I see. Then I, the monster, must be exposed, eh? And afterward destroyed. A very pretty little idea! And the mines and mills which I own--"

"You own nothing, Mr. Ames, except by consent of the people whom you oppress. They will wake up some day; and then state and national ownership of public utilities will come, forced by such as you."

"And that desideratum will result in making everybody honest, I suppose?"

"No," she answered gravely. "We must go deeper than that. All our present troubles, whether domestic, business, civic, or social, come from a total misapprehension of the nature of God--a misunderstanding of what is really good. We have all got to prove Him. And we are very foolish to lose any more time setting about it, don't you think so?

"You see," she went on, while he sat studying her, "those poor people down at Avon don't know any more about what is the real good than you do. And that's why their thoughts and yours center upon the false pleasures of this ephemeral existence called life--this existence of the so-called physical senses--and why you both become the tools of vice, disease, and misfortune. They build up such men as you, and then you turn about and crush them. And in the end you are both what the Bible says--poor, deluded fools."

"Well, I'll be--"

"Oh, don't swear!" she pleaded, again seizing his hand and laughing up into his face. But then her smile vanished.

"It's time you started to prove God," she said earnestly. "Won't you begin now--to-day? Haven't you yet learned that evil is the very stupidest, dullest, most uninteresting thing in the world? It is, really. Won't you turn from your material endeavors now, and take time to learn to really live? You've got plenty of time, you know, for you aren't obliged to work for a living."

She was leaning close to him, and her breath touched his cheek. Her soft little hand lay upon his own. And her great, dark eyes looked into his with a light which he knew, despite his perverted thought, came from the unquenchable flame of her selfless love.

Again that unfamiliar sentiment--nay, rather, that sentiment long dormant--stirred within him. Again his worldly concepts, long entrenched, instantly rose to meet and overthrow it. He had not yet learned to analyze the thoughts which crept so silently into his ever-open mentality. To all alike he gave free access. And to those which savored of things earthy he still gave the power to build, with himself as a willing tool.

"You will--help me--to live?" he said. He thought her the most gloriously beautiful object he had ever known, as she sat there before him, so simply gowned, and yet clothed with that which all the gold of Ophir could not have bought.

"Yes, gladly--oh, so gladly!" Her eyes sparkled with a rush of tears.

"Don't you think," he said gently, drawing his chair a little closer to her, "that we have quite misunderstood each other? I am sure we have."

"Perhaps so," she answered thoughtfully. "But," with a happy smile again lighting her features, "we can understand each other now, can't we?"

"Of course we can! And hasn't the time come for us to work together, instead of continuing to oppose each other?"

"Yes! yes, indeed!" she cried eagerly.

"I--I have been thinking so ever since I returned yesterday from Washington. I am--I--"

"We need each other, don't we?" the artless girl exclaimed, as she beamed upon him.

"I am positive of it!" he said with suggestive emphasis. "I can help you--more than you realize--and I want to. I--I've been sorry for you, little girl, mighty sorry, ever since that story got abroad about--"

"Oh, never mind that!" she interrupted happily. "We are living in the present, you know."

"True--and in the future. But things haven't been right for you. And I want to see them straightened out. And you and I can do it, little one. Madam Beaubien hasn't been treated right, either. And--"

"There!" she laughed, holding up a warning finger. "We're going to forget that in the good we're going to do, aren't we?"

"Yes, that's so. And you are going to get a square deal. Now, I've got a plan to make everything right. I want to see you in the place that belongs to you. I want to see you happy, and surrounded by all that is rightfully yours. And if you will join me, we will bring that all about. I told you this once before, you may remember."

He stopped and awaited the effect of his words upon the girl.

"But, Mr. Ames," she replied, her eyes shining with a great hope, "don't think about me! It's the people at Avon that I want to help."

"We'll help them, you and I. We'll make things right all round. And Madam Beaubien shall have no further trouble. Nor shall the Express."

"Oh, Mr. Ames! Do you really mean it? And--Sidney?"

"Sidney shall come home--"

With a rush the impulsive girl, forgetting all but the apparent success of her mission, threw herself upon him and clasped her arms about his neck. "Oh," she cried, "it is love that has done all this! And it has won you!"

The startled man strained the girl tightly in his arms. He could feel the quick throbbing in her throat. Her warm breath played upon his cheek like fitful tropic breezes. For a brief moment the supreme gift of the universe seemed to be laid at his feet. For a fleeting interval the man of dust faded, and a new being, pure and white, seemed to rise within him.

"Yes," he murmured gently, "we'll take him to our home with us."

Slowly, very slowly, the girl released herself from his embrace and stepped back. "With--us?" she murmured, searching his face for the meaning which she had dimly discerned in his words.

"Yes--listen!" He reached forward and with a quick movement seized her hand. "Listen, little girl. I want you--I want you! Not now--no, you needn't come to me until you are ready. But say that you will come! Say that! Why, I didn't know until to-day what it was that was making me over! It's you! Don't go! Don't--"

Carmen had struggled away from him, and, with a look of bewilderment upon her face, was moving toward the door. "Oh, I didn't know," she murmured, "that you were--were--proposing marriage to me!"

"Don't you understand?" he pursued. "We'll just make all things new! We'll begin all over again, you and I! Why, I'll do anything--anything in the world you say, Carmen, if you will come to me--if you will be my little wife!

"I know--I know," he hastily resumed, as she halted and stood seemingly rooted to the floor, "there is a great difference in our ages. But that is nothing--many happy marriages are made between ages just as far apart as ours. Think--think what it means to you! I'll make you a queen! I'll surround you with limitless wealth! I'll make you leader of society! I'll make Madam Beaubien rich! I'll support the Express, and make it what you want it to be! I'll do whatever you say for the people of Avon! Think, little girl, what depends now upon you!"

Carmen turned and came slowly back to him. "And--you will not do these things--unless I marry you?" she said in a voice scarcely above a whisper.

"I will do them all, Carmen, if you will come to me!"

"But--oh, you were only deceiving me all the time! And now--if I refuse--then what?"

"It depends upon you, entirely--and you will come? Not now--but within the next few months--within the year--tell me that you will!"

"But--you will do these things whether I come to you or not?" she persisted.

"I've put it all into your hands," he answered shortly. "I've named the condition."

A strange look crossed the girl's face. She stood as if stunned. Then she glanced about in helpless bewilderment.

"I--I--love--you," she murmured, as she looked off toward the window, but with unseeing eyes. "I would do anything for you that was right. I--love--everybody--everybody; but there are no conditions to my love. Oh!" she suddenly cried, burying her face in her hands and bursting into tears. "You have tried to buy me!"

Ames rose and came to her. Taking her by the hand he led her, unresisting, back to her chair.

"Listen," he said, bending toward her. "Go home now and think it all over. Then let me know your answer. It was sudden, I admit; I took you by surprise. But--well, you are not going to prevent the accomplishment of all that good, are you? Think! It all depends upon your word!"

The girl raised her tear-stained face. She had been crushed; and another lesson in the cruelty of the human mind--that human mind which has changed not in a thousand years--had been read to her. But again she smiled bravely, as she wiped her eyes.

"It's all right now," she murmured. "It was all right all the time--and I was protected."

Then she turned to him. "Some day," she said gently, and in a voice that trembled just a little, "you will help the people of Avon, but not because I shall marry you. God does not work that way. I have loved you. And I love them. And nothing can kill that love. God will open the way."

"Then you refuse my offer, do you?" he asked sharply, as his face set. "Remember, all the blame will be upon you. I have shown you a way out."

She looked up at him. She saw now with a clairvoyance which separated him from the mask which he had worn. Her glance penetrated until it found his soul.

"You have shown me the depths of the carnal mind," she slowly replied. "The responsibility is not with me, but with--God. I--I came to-day to--to help you. But now I must leave you--with Him."

"Humph!"

He stooped and took up her muff which lay upon the floor. As he did so, a letter fell out. He seized it and glanced at the superscription.

"Cartagena! To Josè de Rincón! Another little billet-doux to your priestly lover, eh?"

She looked down at the letter which he held. "It is money," she said, though her thought seemed far away. "Money that I am sending to a little newsboy who bears his name."

"Ha! His brat! But, you still love that fallen priest?"

"Yes," was the whispered answer.

He rose and opened a drawer in his desk. Taking out a paper-bound book, he held it out to the girl. "Look here," he sneered. "Here's a little piece of work which your brilliant lover did some time ago. 'Confessions of a Roman Catholic Priest.' Do you know the penalty your clerical paramour paid for that, eh? Then I'll tell you," bending over close to her ear, "his life!"

Carmen rose unsteadily. The color had fled from her cheeks. She staggered a few steps toward the door, then stopped. "God--is--is--everywhere!" she murmured. It was the refuge of her childhood days.

Then she reeled, and fell heavily to the floor.

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