The power behind the throne. A story of the modern maelstrom

Front matter

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Chapter I. The Lily And The Lump

Soft and mellow the twilight settled down upon the suburban village of Poolville. The light deepened into a yellow veil of amber and gold. The river was a sheen of glittering splendor, and from afar the water of the Sound mingled its purplish mists with the lambent sky. Autumn’s drift was lodged on w T ood and meadow — following Springtide’s kisses and Summer’s ardent glow.

Poolville was one of the near outlying populations of the American metropolis. Along the eastern border a river flowed, though it may be doubtful whether all the natural offshoots of the lower Hudson may be called “rivers.” It was a peaceable body of water, and on its placid bosom the sober-minded geese floated in majesty, and sailed and sailed away. Below the village the river took a cranky turn, through ancient marsh and brake, and then drew nearer to the city and its higher land.

At Poolville, a bayou, or estuary, reached out from the riyer, like a crooked finger, and across this was a country bridge. Pond and bridge have now disappeared.

As the shadowy gloaming peacefully settles down upon the village, a family carriage is driven along the roadway leading over the bridge. In this carriage is a child, a little girl, not more than six years of age. She is one of the goldenhaired little angels who dwell in poets’ dreams and mothers’ loves. While the carriage is crossing the bridge, the fair-haired elfin is laughing and crowing in childish glee, and lashing weeds and posts with the driver’s whip.

Upon the edge of the bridge sat a curious object, which upon close inspection resembled a boy ! But so dreadfully ragged was he, and so humped up into a formless mass, that he could easily be mistaken for anything in the nature of an animal curiosity. The name of the lump was Rap Mc- Kenzie— and he exercised a fish-line in solemn anxiety. That would be a rude jester who would link together the fortunes of the shapeless lump on the bridge and the little Glory in the carriage, switching the whip in careless merriment.

In driving leisurely by, the little girl caught sight of the silent lump. “What’s that, mamma?” And she gave the object of her curiosity a playful cut of the whip.

The whip scarcely touched the youngster, but it clipped the ragged emblem of a hat, which crowned the highest section of the mass — and over it went into the river ! The frolicsome angel soon discovered that the thing was alive. It yelled. It rose with great agility, and began the delivery of a sermon well spiced with noisy adjectives.

THE LILY AND THE LUMP.

But when his eyes rested upon the frightened face of the child, he held his breath and stared vigorously at the fairy -like beauty. The carriage stopped and the little girl’s father handed him a coin, remarking that his daughter was very sorry.

At that the “vision” began to cry and talk at the same time— and Rags couldn’t stand it to see Beauty grieved, go he leaped upon fche carriage step, crowded the money into h( X hand, ran away, and went without a hat fe? e.\day or two, or until he could pick up another.

Rap McKenzie lived with his parents in a diminutive house, which was going to seed, in a sloping meadow upon the riyer bank, a half-mile below the bridge. In that part of Poolville were several factories. There were great smoke-stacks climbing heavenward, attached to buildings whose mission it w r as to create shovels and stewpans for the human race. One large structure was devoted to machine work of a finer and more esthetic type— fine iron and brass machinery — the model-maker’s Mecca and the inventor’s Paradise !

Now, Mr., Miss, or Mistress, if you have to travel far with so ill-looking a creature as this youth, it will be well, though disagreeable, to have an introduction. We apologise for his existence— to the wholly righteous and the spotless. The apology is made in behalf of Society, which permits such squalid infancy to be the unearned inheritance of the blameless born ! We trust that the cultured reader will seek acquaintance with Rap in the spirit of an evangel, to compel civil-

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ized Inhumanity to act more closely to its pretentious development.

Rap was no angel. When born he was not welcomed by the pattering footsteps of countless barefooted cherubs, crowding the corridors of heaven to catch another blissful immortality by the wings. There was never a more unpromising rythm, in all that prophetic rataplan of barefoot seraphs, than when they scampered off at the announcement of his birth ! Nor was he born in the beauty of the lily. Over above his dark face were scattered trifles of red hair, and the blue of his eyes matched no cerulean hue known to picture builders. People who have seen his dark-brown hair in later years may question our statement, but the truth is with us. His mouth was generous, his ears magnanimous, his fists ponderous. His voice was not melodious.

Rap's education was not profound. The Doctrine of the Absolute was a cave of emptiness to him. The squaring of the circle was as simple to him as the multiplication table, having heard of nei ther !

Not that his education had been neglected along certain other lines! No! At ten years of age he could mark his fights by the pickets on Squire Ketchum’s fence— the posts would count the “lickin's.” At fourteen he had been on trial for his liberty before the Squire, and only escaped the reformatory bv the plea of his mother. Her plea was that her boy was fighting for his father’s life that time ; and as the father was killed, the boy would now be her only support.

THE LILY AND THE LUMP.

A very perceptible smile covered the face of the court when the plea was made, which smile the murky brain of the boy observed. Inasmuch as the father had been a brute whom the community were happy to be rid of, the court concluded to accept one blessing at a bime, and give the boy a chance to try it alone. Even the court could see that at one time the mother had been a bud of the most excellent promise, and that her womanhood was not now wholly lost, though for twenty years she had breathed the atmosphere of the sewers, and apparently partaken of its noxious inhalations. Hope still lay upon the altar of her heart, waiting for fire from the Lord God to come down and give it the divine opportunity to burn— and it came !

It was not long after that the “boys” heard that Rap was at work on a job. He found his first opportunity in connection with the foundry of the machinery establishment over the way. Wjth the same energy that he fought his ‘‘scraps” he worked to remove iron-scraps from the millgrounds to the place directed. As usual, in the matter of “scraps,” he did more than was expected of him! — while he asked pay only for the contract.

A week or two after the removal of the scrap-iron, the Superintendent of the works heard two of the men laughing at the “grit” of the boy in the removal of the slag as well as the scrap, and getting pay for the removal of but one pile of the debris ! A few days after this he was near by when the ex-scapegrace asked the foreman for more work, with the look but not accent of a dolt.

“Say boss, gimme another job!”

The “boss” did not reply at once. Meantime the superintendent came up and looked over the youth impelled by curiosity. He saw a broadfaced, rough, matured, bony lad of perhaps fourteen years, with an exceedingly animal mouth— not prominent, but sensuous— and animal limbs.

“Kin ye give me somethin’ to do boss? Wasn’t the scrap removed all right?”

It was with a feeling of pity that the superintendent looked upon the object — bordering upon disgust. “Surely,” thought he, “there can be no equality of the human race while such offspring are thrust upon the world to grow up without even animal training.” And then he said to the boy in a spirit of curiosity, to hear him talk:

“Are you the boy that moved the scrap-iron to the new wing?”

“Yes sir.”

“And that pile of slag?”

“Yes sir.”

“Did you get pay for moving both?”

“Yes sir.”

“How so? Were you hired to move both piles?”

“No sir, but I heerd ther boss say as to how both o’ them piles had ter go— and so yer see I lifted in and made both went.”

“And you were paid extra for it probably?”

“No sir, I wasn’t hired for to do it.”

“Now I remember, you are the boy that whipped Jerry Smith, in the engine room, some time ago?”

THE LILY AND THE LUMP.

“Yes sir.”

“Would you like a steady iob?”

“No, no,” he replied, both men laughing at Rap’s solemn face, “at more useful work.”

“Yes sir.”

“Will you agree to live in peace with all the world?”

Rap’s dull eyes showed a slight, very slight, break in their slumberous dullness. He cast them down to his feet, and then to his hands and his wretched clothing. With one of his earliest efforts to think, he replied,

“Mister, I’m afeered I aint good for anything. I don’t know what I kin do. I don’t know nothin’ ! I’ll do anything I kin.”

He uttered this in a rather despairing tone, and very slowly. He continued: “I’m as strong as a ox, an’ I likes to be gettin’ somewheres.”

The superintendent looked at the machine before him — bones and muscle— five senses and a big appetite! “Why do such things cumber the earth?” he muttered.

“Laird,” he said aloud to the foreman, “promote the lad at the cupola ; the work is too heavy for him. Set this boy at the work, and see if we can’t make a president of him!”

Chapter II. The Clod And The Millionaire

Our animal went to work. Soon the weatherbeaten cottage, in the meadow by the river, had every window patched, and the leaks in the roof repaired; the fence straightened up. There was rest in the poor home — for hope is rest in the midst of toil. The old “good” in the mother's heart began to pulse and throb, like as the unborn robin, when warmed to life in the shell.

Rap deserted his boisterous crowd, and moved silently, clumsily to his task. In summer time, after work at night he wandered up and down the river bank, as if to tire his overgrown body — perhaps to muse within the narrow confines of his prison house of ignorance !

The mother did not like these after supper wanderings. And yet, it may have been the “mother” in his chrj^salis self, having a wrestle with the angels at Peniel— and like Jacob, “he knew them not!”

The life of the ragged lump, touched alike by the whip and the sorrow of the child, is begun. We would like to continue and introduce all those who will enter upon our pages, and have the circle completed. But the impulse to stick to Rap a few’ moments longer isvery strong— not with stand-

CLOD AND MILLIONAIRE, in g 'the fact that he smacks his lips at the table and swizzles his soup in an uncomfortable manner !

You see, reader, fair or unfair, we are afraid that in the whirlpool of the social maelstrom — amidst the carved architraves of the polished social structure— and happier epic activities— we shall forget an item of great importance to this Clod, before the rags begin to drop from his soul.

And therefore— with a rubv lip and a darkblue eve, and a slender waist and a taper hand, a beautiful dream, standing behind the doorway of memory — veiled m its own light wavy hair, and lustrous with its sunshine — waiting upon our call to step forth upon a real stage of a real world— with this angel-drapery of a soul waiting, we linger unwillingly in a grosser sphere ! Come, ye gentle reader, dip your hands into the filthy clay wallowed out by a wise generation— and we will burn it in the furnace fire of fate, and bring it forth to sit upon a pedestal in the vestibule of the gods !

Rap has become eighteen years of age. He has worked these long years under Boss Laird without a word of praise or complaint. He has not risen above the common laborer. He is an animal still, of powerful frame, seeming to work without weariness, and always ready to do the work of others when their strength failed or kindness invited.

He still “mopes” — spends his time away from his fellows. He has made no progress in the refinements of life. He is still one of a mighty brigade who will forever fill the dark basement of human life with blindness, ignorance, woe— until

Society takes tlie child and makes the future man a possibility.

Rap was gentle of speech to his mother, and obeyed with silent willingness. Her dream of better things for him, which had budded on the border-land of pride, had mostly faded away as her hair silvered, and the boy approached the man in bodily development.

But at this time an incident occurred which changed the current of their lives. It was not the bursting of some mighty ambition which would not be chained by Ignorance! It was an accidental thrusting of the boy-life before the great man-life — the clod-life before the beauty -life — opening by Chance the mighty Dortals of the Avenue of Effort— gates which Society should ever keep ajar, and even thrust the youthful travellers within. Rap’s deitv was Chance. Chance took him fiercely by the hand. He was standing upon a platform at the summit of the furnace cupola or tower, where he could look down upon the boiling, molten iron. We are not familiar with the work of the foundry, but will relate the circumstance as it comes to our memory. Over the platform upon which Rap McKenzie stood, say four feet above, was a narrow plank tramway, upon which a car was drawn by chains, for the purpose of dumping scrap-iron into the furnace below.

The furnace top, at the summit of the cupola, was open, and the molten, violet-hot contents below were exposed to view. Upon the extreme end of the tramway, above where Rap stood, were the superintendent, a Mr. Roberts, and a Mr.

CLOD AND MILLIONAIRE.

Telford Knox, the two latter gentlemen little recking* that so much of their own destiny lay wrapt within the unobserved and unobserving face beneath them.

Telford Knox was one of the wealthiest men of New York, several times a millionaire, and a power in the city and state politics. Mr. Roberts was a young* man scarcely known at that time, but afterwards one of the prominent financiers of this country. The two men were organizing a manufacturing and land syndicate at Poolville, and at this moment were observing the processes of the foundry work. Mr. Knox was a man of remarkable tact and judgment, and decision of character; finely built, splendidly educated. At this time he was about forty years of age. He approached the Chesterfieldian model in courtesy and social culture. His smile was always ready and natural, his mouth of Grecian mould, partially hidden by a dark beard and mustache; his hand shapely, and absolutely free from jewelry, as was his well-dressed person.

As these three men turned upon that upper tramway, to leave the cupola, the tram-chains were rattled at the feet of Mr. Knox, by some laborer below . Thinking that perhaps the tramcar was about to move, and his mind pre-occupied, he took a backward step— with his back to that dangerous extremity! That step was safe. But he took another! Millions in bank, and vaults loaded with securities, were of no avail now! Down he plunged, and beneath him that fearful mass of fiery fluid !

Gravity draws down the purple-blooded as it

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would the baser elements of earth — relentless, remorseless.

The poor millionaire uttered no cry — the hot breath of the pit surged up as if to quiet consciousness before he felt a pain — and across his vision within there rested the dear face of a beautiful girl, who whispered, “Father,” and disappeared.

The superintendent saw it all — and tried in vain to shriek ; the throat refused, palsied with terror — and his mouth gasped, noiseless!

Roberts stood motionless on the tramw r ay.

Rap McKenzie stood upon the summit-platform, a few feet below the tramway. He saw the first backward step, and a powerful pressure moved within his dormant brain, as if to think beyond — to dreadful possibilities. He saw the second step the plunge! Not a muscle moved

upon his broad, passionless face as he looked on the horror. His immobile mind awakened, as it seemed to him, with such horrible sluggishness !

In that terrible half-second, when the toppling form seemed but balanced over the seething maw of hell, the youth struck his breast savagely, as if to drive Thought into the webby caverns of an unlighted brain ! — and he leaped blindly, without waiting for the flash of Purpose!

It was now two lives instead of one— the millionaire and the clod — they struck a balance and were quits upon the ledger. The boy thought his mind was slow — but it had moved without him! What mortal dream could flash athwart a conscious mind to thrust him against that millionaire, already in the jaws of destruction?

CLOD AND MILLIONAIRE.

Why moralize on the deed— and at such a time?

Because there was method in the madness! The giant body of the youth struck the millionaire with tremendous force, and dashed it against the upper rim on the other side of the crater-like opening— and he tumbled headlong down the outside, to the earth twenty-five feet below.

But the shock destroyed the impetus of the boy’s body — and to the horror of the observers, he fell inside the cupola!— his eyes bursting from their sockets and his face convulsed with sudden anguish! One hand grasped for the clothing of the millionaire, but too late !

The other hand reached the smooth brick surface of the summit wall— and for an instant stayed his fall, and then slipped along to death ! But with a mighty shock of his limbs and a swing of his other arm, in that one slow second, he brought his other hand upon the upper surface and stayed the fall. It was a fearful moment, in which the sweat of agony started upon every face ! Thank God, it was in time !— with a struggle born of Hope, wrestling with despair, the young giant’s bodv was writhed upward, and plunging out of the crater, followed Telford Knox to the ground below.

The millionaire was unhurt ; the boy was pick*: ed up unconscious and with a broken limb.

Chapter III. It Is Wisdom To Know Our Ignorance

It is difficult to wholly conquer the Devil that hides in our breast in this selfish world. He will even manifest his presence when we are startled by a heroism unsurpassed in sacrificial exploits. Thus, in the fateful moment of the fall, in the midst of so sublime an action, Mr. Roberts, the companion of Mr. Knox, rejoiced at the preservation of the millionaire, but scarcely thought of the fate of the Clod. Such extremely heartless men are rare indeed. When he heard the story of the deed repeated from mouth to mouth, until by general consent the great factory ceased its busy hum, and hundreds poured fourth to bless the brave youth, and to pray for him in broken voices, and offer aid, this singular cynic observed,

“Oh well, he will get his reward !”

And thus the world began to put the matter, and will so long as the Clods exist. Every one knew of Knox, the financier. The world knew him. He was clothed with an intangible power, born of wealth, and kin to command. The world said that that fellow would not leap to death to rescue Lazarus; but Dives— that was a different matter — there was the reward! It is an ingeni-

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ous little Devil — the shadow of the greater. And so we are driven by the philosophy of Lucifer to turn upon our hero and ask him if lie would have leaped over that furnace top for Limps y Simpkins?

Ah, the sister of Justice comes to the aid of our humble cavalier, and her whisper fills the heart of man; and on viewless wings, peri-like, fills the realm of God, “as far as the universe spreads her flaming wall!”

“There is an unborn greatness even in the soul clothed with ignorance. It is delivered sometimes by inspiration— never by sordid impulse.”

McKenzie would righteously answer a call, first, to do a greater service to his race than a lesser — there being no knowledge of reward in either case. But the instant death of “Power” was a greater loss to the race than the loss of machinery. This is, perhaps, a “cruel righteousness.” The softening of its cruelty is by leaving no human machines without the “power”— intelligence. McKenzie thought nothing of reward in that imperious instant.

Rap lay many weeks in bed, attended by his gentle mother, and she was sustained by a thousand loving hearts — those who had heard of his brave deed. When barely recovered he walked over to the factory on a pair of crutches. It was a beautiful afternoon, and he shook the hand of many on the way, with silent wonder at the change in his reception. He found Mr. Laird, and inquired if his place were open for him to begin work again ?

“Never sir.”

“ Another man got the job, I suppose/’ soberly observed the boy.

“Yes sir, and he’s going to keep it too,” said Laird, gruffly.

“That’s too bad sir,” returned Rap, in a passionless tone.

“Yes, it’s a cold world, aint it Rap?”

“It are sir— and winter’s cornin’ on too, sir. I reckon the garden truck is a’most in though.”

Laird looked at the simple-minded giant, now many shades thinner than two months before. “Well, its worse than 1 thought,” he said to himself. “Education would be wasted on him!” How little we know of the gigantic powers that sleep in life and perish in death, all for the want of an awakening upon the part of Society.

“I’ll hev a monstrus doctor’s bill to pay ”

“Will you?” said Laird.

“Yes, them chaps isn’t workin’ fer naw thin.”

“Young man, how old are you?” asked Laird.

“Eighteen, sir.”

“Indeed, I took you for six.”

“Why sir?” asked the boy, a trifle shady.

“Do you know who your doctor is?”

“A big gun of a doctor from the city, sir— that Mr. Knox sent. I s’pose he reckoned he wouldn’t charge as much to the likes o’ me.”

“He charges $50* a visit, Rap, but I suppose that he will come down to $49 in your case.” Laird looked at the unperturbed innocent before him, hardly able to repress a grin.

“Well, he’ll be an old man when he gits hisi pay,” said the boy.

“I guess not. He’s paid already. Don’t you suppose Knox would pay him? Why, lad, Knox is worth millions, millions, my boy!”

“Millions is a good deal, isn’t it, Mr. Laird?”

“Yes, it’s oceans of money, miles high.”

Well, I hope he’ll pay the doctor then — fer it mought a ben his own leg or wuss.”

“There comes the doctor and Mr. Knox too,” said Laird, nodding down the street. “They’ll break your other leg now, for coming over here.”

Across the Poolville bridge, where in our opening chapter sat a lump of living clay, waiting for some tide of time to bear him out upon the ocean of humanity, drove a carriage, and therein two gentlemen, whose conversation was wholly and seriously occupied with that same child of Poverty and Nothingness.

“Mr. Knox,” said the doctor, “it is singular, that you broad men, politicians, do not see that in such youths as this lie wonderful power — which it is Society’s duty to develop.”

“And why our duty, when the flame of power you speak of, if it really exist, will burn its own way through the crust, and the man become a self-made character?”

“You make two statements,” replied the doctor, “which the truth will not sustain, to my way' of thinking. First, the possibilities of power in the neglected child of neglectful or ignorant parents are not ‘flames.’ You imagine a flame of ambition may be burning in this boy’s animal nature! It is not so. The intellect is simply asleep. You picture a darkened, imprisoned soul beating against the walls of Ignorance. Now

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the darkened soul is doing no beating. Society is a prison and the soul a prisoner by neglect. The soul or intellect has every power, of the highest order, through every avenue of possible greatness, but it is clothed with animal nature. Ignorance is not a want of power— it is a want of the knowledge of power. You have studied mental philosophv in earlier days?”

“Yes.”

“And have read Plato?”

“Yes.”

“Then you understand me?”

“I do,” said Mr. Knox thoughtfully.

“Then, why should you politicians war in everlasting and almost disgraceful contention for personal and temporal advantages, when a world steeped in animal shame, Ignorance, appeals to Society for the development of power in humanity?”

“With what result?” asked Knox.

“If 'a thousand men, by knowledge of forces, natural and intellectual, have builded our civilization to what it is, what a civilization and what a glory would follow the development of all people to power and emprise!” And as the doctor said this, his face glowed with expectant fervor.

“And who would do the scrub-work,” asked the doctor.

“Machinery is now driving out the scrubbers. But sir, you mistake the working people.”

“How?”

“Why they are intelligent, reading, studious, in certain localities— and yet toil just the same!”

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“ Where is that Utopia ?”

“1 came from the west,” replied the doctor, “five years ago — from the prairie states — a farmer’s son. A wealthy man educated me. In that western country revolutions in public thought and in the higher elements of statecraft occur before you city men dream of revolution !”

“What, cow-boy statesmen?” said Knox, with a smile.

“Cowboys are an extremelv western development, and a sort of myth, anyway. But I will tell you what I knew the editor of a farmer’s paper to do once. He was talking with a high public functionary in the city of St. Paul. The pub. func. remarked that the farmers could inaugurate a wonderful revolution in politics if they were only posted! ‘Well,’ said the editor, ‘you put up one hundred dollars, and I will do the same. We will sally out into the city streets, and ask who our congressman is— of the first one hundred voters we meet. If three out of one hundred can answer correctly, you take the $ 200. If not, I take it. Then we will go down to the village of Glencoe, hire a horse and buggy, and sail out into the farmers’ kingdom. If, out of the first one hundred actual, home-owning, landworking farmers, more than three do not know w 7 ho their congressman is, you take the wager, otherwise I take it? ‘Bless me,’ said the state official, ‘I don’t know who he is myself!’ The fact is, Mr. Knox, there never was a great movement for humanity, in all history, that the agricultural toiler does not come thundering at the gates of the cities— to overcome our blindness and ignorance. We think we know it all. Revolutions are the result of our vanity.”

“But we use the laboring man here by means of their ‘intelligent leaders.’ ”

“But in another generation those leaders will hang on the lamp posts. Rome and France repeat the story.”

“Well, doctor, there is the scamp we’re looking after, over yonder; we will have to end our diseussion.”

“Yes, and he ought to be sick a month longer for being out today.”

At this time the two gentlemen drove up to the youth. They brought him home and chided the mother for letting him out so soon.

“It was me, doctor, that stole out— I wanted' Mr. Laird to keep my job for me. But it’s gone, and I won’t git it agin.”

There was a long talk. The sturdv boy betrayed his hopeless ignorance full oft, although endowed with fair common sense. Much to the wonder of Mr. Knox, he found that his full first name was Raphael— and he thereafter called him by that ill-fitting but more musical title.

He made the boy a direct offer to start him in business, either in city or village— at which the Doctor looked up and smiled, and turned to the boy with deep interest.

“1 don’t want that, sir, thankin’ ye sir,” said the boy.

“Certainly you do. You are young yet. You will have to go into some other businessplace first, of course.” %

“No,” answered the boy slowly. “I don’t