Among these people Thyrsis sat three times a day, silent and
tortured, paying a high price for each morsel of food he ate. But
also he was lonely, and craving any sort of respite; and in the
course of time he became acquainted with several of the younger men.
One of the diversions in their pitiful and narrow lives was to
gather in some room and indulge in petty gambling; sitting for hours
upon hours with their faculties alert upon the attempt to get from
each other some small fraction of that weekly stipend which kept
them alive. Sometimes they played "penny-ante", and sometimes
_vingt_ _et_ _un_; once, as it chanced, they needed another player,
and they urged Thyrsis to join them.

And so, for the first time in his life, Thyrsis learned what it
meant to lay his soul upon the lap of the goddess of chance. From
eight o'clock that evening until two the next morning, he sat in a
suffocating room full of cigarette-smoke, trying in vain to win back
the dollar or two he had lost at the outset; flushed and trembling
with excitement, and hating himself with a bitter and tormenting
hatred. And so he discovered his vice; he discovered that he had in
him the soul of the gambler! And all the rest of the winter he had
to wrestle with that shame. He would go to his dinner, tired and
heartsick; and they would ask him to play again; and he--the man who
carried a message for humanity in his heart--he would yield! Three
times during that winter he fell into the mire; on Washington's
birthday he began to play in the morning, and stopping only for
meals, he played until long after midnight. Forever afterwards he
was a humbler and a gentler man because of that experience;
understanding how squalor abases one, and how swiftly and stealthily
an evil passion closes its grasp about the soul.

Section 2. Of this shameful thing he said not a word to Corydon. But
he avoided meeting her, because of the depths of his despair. And so
at last there came a letter from her--a long and unusual one.
Corydon, too, was having her troubles, it appeared.

"I am writing in haste," she said; "I shall mail the letter at once,
before my resolution fails me. At least a dozen times I have made up
my mind to tell you or to write you what is here, and each time I
have turned back. But now I have got to a stage where I must have
your help.

"I enclose a long letter which I wrote you years ago, before we were
married. I was looking over some old papers the other day and came
upon it. Generally when I wrote you letters that I did not send, I
tore them up; but something led me to keep this one--I had a feeling
that some day it would be interesting as a curiosity. You see, I am
always persuading myself that I can get over this trouble, and learn
to laugh at it; and I am always succeeding--but only to have it crop
up in some different form. I have told you a little of it now and
then--but stop and read the enclosed, and you will see."

So Thyrsis read the old letter--a missive of anguish and terror, and
beginning with elaborate preludings and hesitations:

"I implore you to be patient with me this once; and when I have
gotten through, I want you still to love me, if possible. I have
been trying to get the courage to write you something that is so
mean and low, childish and almost imbecile, that there have been
moments in which my horror of it was absolutely unspeakable; when I
have imagined myself as a soul damned, when I thought that if you
knew, you would think I had a diseased brain. I only ask you to read
patiently what I am going to write; but know that every word is a
horrible effort, that it is torture and humiliation to me to write
it. I have a feeling now as though I were psychologically dissecting
something.

"It must have been eight years ago, when I was sick in bed; in a
fever or delirium I conceived the idea that there was a coffin under
my bed. The thought took hold of me, somehow, like an octopus, and I
used to writhe under it, and get into fearful perspirations. I never
went near a bed that I didn't think of this thing with the same
horror.

"And so I seemed to have created a nervousness, a sense of dread,
before which I was absolutely helpless. I cannot tell you how
hopelessly or fearfully I suffered, or what depths of despondency
and despair and blackness I was cast into. I cannot understand how a
creature could so manufacture torments for itself. But this is not
all, just for once have mercy--and yet even now I am laughing at
myself!

"The winter I was sixteen I was much disappointed that I could not
go to college, and almost the whole winter, when I was not diverted,
I would brood over this habit. As I grew older, it would come to me
in spasms, and it seemed to my dawning sense so monstrously child-
like, so insane, that I was aghast that it had power to affect me. I
can find no words to tell you of the unspeakable horror with which I
saw, in my older days, that a thought could so torment me; the mere
fact of its being able to torment I could never forget. I know it
was silly, unreasonable; and yet every time it came to me I would be
plunged into a hopelessness and melancholy, than which I can
honestly conceive nothing more fearful upon earth.

"Well, I continued to pursue myself with this morbidity (I would
almost, rather kill myself than write this). As I got older my
terror was less, but my melancholy greater, until I would be only
half conscious of what I was allowing myself to do. I seemed to have
engendered within myself a hob-goblin. Once--it was only last
winter--I saw a nasty word written on a fence, and it sent a shudder
through me, for I knew it would follow me and make me think of other
things like it. I felt, since thoughts have such power to terrorize
me, how can I ever get away from them?

"Oh, how I have struggled--tried to say it was not true--that I was
just as sane as other people! And this made my thirst for beauty all
the more maddening, and my melancholy all the more complete! So I
have lived, at intervals, and words cannot describe the hell that I
have endured, the more horrible because it seemed to me so
unreasonable, so insane. It occurred to me more or less this summer,
though in a milder form; but it often frightened me more than ever,
as I felt how beautiful you were, and what you would think of me, if
you knew I was capable of being the prey of such thoughts. So they
were always more dreadful to me.

"Can you possibly understand how the thought of a word could make me
shudder? The mere idea of my being capable of thinking of anything
that was not beautiful! When I longed to be only the embodiment of
beauty--and sometimes I _am_ beautiful! I look into the glass, and I
seem to have something in my face that is a promise of a glory to
come--a light, a something,--I love to imagine it. And then, that a
thought should knock me prone, and make me cringe--from the mere
fact of its lowness and meanness!

"For the last two or three days I have again victimized myself; and
when I was not studying I was asking myself in anguish what was the
matter with me, and if there was no hope for me on earth. I dodged
around and tried to laugh it off, then I went to the piano and lost
myself in the dissatisfaction of my playing; but when I stopped, I
was conscious of a great depression, as though I were chained in a
dungeon. I jumped up, and said I could stand it no longer. I will
tell Thyrsis, I said; but no, I will die first! I added. He could
not tolerate me afterwards, he would think me only fit for the
insane-asylum. Oh, why should I be so cursed? And then, somehow, I
imagined that I told you, and that you laughed at me, that you
pitied me--and that you held out your hand, and said, 'Come, you
_shall_ find beauty--poor, deluded, wretched, little creature!' I
really imagined that this had happened, and I was relieved as with a
draught of fresh air.

"Oh, God in Heaven, to think that I could ever have been so
degraded! My head hurts, and I absolutely am dazed, to think that I
have been able to write you of something for which (though it has
not been my making) I am so ashamed and humiliated I can hardly hold
my head up. I think in my short life I have atoned for the sins of
many souls."

Section 3. Such was the old-time letter. "And now," wrote Corydon,
"I don't want you to think that if I did not send you this, it was
because I was afraid to do it, or unwilling to trust to your love.
It was simply because I felt that I could conquer these things--that
it would be weak and contemptible of me not to do so. Nor is the
reason I write you now that I have not been able to conquer them,
that I am still at the mercy of such habits. I am a grown woman, and
I am not afraid of words; I tell myself this a hundred times; and it
is true--and yet there is a way in which it is not true. The thing
is so intricate--I never get to the end of it; I rid myself of the
fear of a hateful idea, but there remains the fact that I should
have been afraid; there is the fear of fear. And then comes a flood
of shame--that I should have it in me to be afraid of fear!

"Thyrsis, as I write to you now I see clearly how perfectly
preposterous and unreal all this is; and again there comes to me the
impulse to tear up this letter, and banish the troop of hob-goblins
from my mind. But no, this time I am determined to make a clean
breast of the thing--for I see that secrecy and solitude are what it
feeds on. If I were happy and busy with you such ideas would have no
power over me. But think how it is, with my loneliness and despair!
I don't want to say anything to make your task harder--but oh,
Thyrsis, it is frightful to have nothing to do but wait, and wait,
and wait! The baby wakes me up in the night and I lie for hours--it
is at such times that these phantoms take hold of me. Do you realize
that I literally never know what it is to have more than three or
four consecutive hours of sleep?

"No, I am not insane, I tell myself; I am not insane! It is the
circumstances of my life that cause this melancholia and misery. It
has been my life, from the very beginning--for what a hopeful and
joyous creature I would have been, had I only had a chance as a
girl! I know that; and you must tell it to me, and help me to
believe it."

Thyrsis read this with less surprise than Corydon had imagined; for
she had been wont to drop hints about her trouble from time to time.
He was shocked, however, to find what a hold it had taken upon her;
the thing sent a chill of fear to his heart. Could it be after all
that she had some taint? But he saw at once that he must not let her
see any such feeling; the least hint of it would have driven her to
distraction. On the contrary, he must minimize the trouble, must
help her to laugh it away, as she asked.

He went to meet her in the park, and found her in an agony of
distress; she had mailed the letter, and then she had wished to
recall it, and had been struggling ever since with the idea that he
would be disgusted with her. Now, when she found that such was not
the case, that he still loved her and trusted her, she was
transported with gratitude.

"But dearest," he said, "how absurd it is to be ashamed of an idea!
If ugly things exist, don't we have to hear of them and know of
them? And so why frighten ourselves because they are in our minds?"

"But Thyrsis," cried she, "they are so hateful!"

"Yes," he said. "But then the more you hate them, the more they
haunt you!"

"That's just it!" she exclaimed.

"But what harm can they do? Can they have any effect upon your
character? You must say to yourself that all this is a consequence
of the structure of your brain-cells. What could be more futile than
trying to forget? As if the very essence of the trying was not
remembering!"

So Thyrsis went on to argue with her. He made her promise him that
in future she would tell him of all her obsessions, permitting no
fear or shame to deter her; and so thereafter he would have to
listen periodically to long accounts of her psychological agonies,
and help her to hunt out the "hob-goblins" from the tangled thickets
of her mind. They were forever settling the matter, positively and
finally--but alas, only to have something unsettle it again. So
Thyrsis had to add to his other accomplishments the equipment of a
psycho-pathologist; he brushed up his French, and read learned
treatises upon the researches in the _SalpГЄtriГЁre_, and the theories
of the "Nancy School".

Section 4. Another month passed by, and still there was no rift in
the clouds. Once more Corydon was forbidden to see him, and so
her pain grew day by day. At last there came another letter, voicing
utter despertion. Something must be done, she declared, she was
slowly going out of her mind. Thyrsis could have no idea of the
shamefulness of her position, the humiliations she had to face. "I
tell you the thing is putting a brand upon my soul," she wrote. "It
is something I shall never get over all my life. It is withering me
up--it is destroying my self-respect, my very decency; it is
depriving me of my power to act, or even to think. People come in,
relatives or friends--even strangers to me--and peer at me and pry
into my affairs; I hear them whispering in the parlor--'Hasn't he
got a position yet?' or 'How can she have anything to do with him?'
The servants gossip about me--the woman I have for a nurse despises
me and insults me, and I have not the courage to rebuke her. To-day
I went almost wild with fury--I rushed into the bathroom and locked
the door and flung myself upon the floor. I found myself gnawing at
the rug in my rage--I mean that literally. That is what life has
left for me!

"I tell you you must take me away, we must get out of this fiendish
city. Let us go into the wilderness as you said, and live as we
can--I would rather starve to death than face these things. Let us
get into the country, Thyrsis. You can work as a farm-hand, and earn
a few dollars a week--surely that could not be a greater strain upon
us than the way things are now."

When Thyrsis received this, he racked his brains once more; and then
he sat down and wrote a letter to Barry Creston. He told how he had
worked over the play, and how it had gone to ruin; he told of his
present plight. He knew, he said, that Mr. Creston had been
interested in the play, and that he was a man understood the needs
of the artist-life. Would he lend two hundred dollars, which would
suffice until Thyrsis could get another work completed?

He waited a week for a reply to this; and when it arrived he opened
it with trembling fingers. He half expected a check to fall
fluttering to the floor; but alas, there was not a single flutter.
"I have read your letter," wrote the young prince, "and I have
considered the matter carefully. I would do what you ask, were it
not for my conviction that it would not be a good thing for you. It
seems to me the testimony of all experience, that artists do their
great work under the spur of necessity. I do not believe that real
art can ever be subsidized. It is for men that you are writing; and
you must find out how to make men hear you. You may not thank me for
this now, but some day you will, I believe."

After duly pondering which communication, Thyrsis racked his wits,
and bethought him of yet another person to try. He sat himself down
and addressed Mr. Robertson Jones. He explained that he was in this
cruel plight, owing to his having devoted so many months to "The
Genius." Even the actors had received something for the performances
of the play they had given; but the author had received nothing at
all. He asked Mr. Jones for a personal loan to help him in a great
emergency; and he promised to repay it at the earliest possible
moment. To which Mr. Jones made this reply--"Inasmuch as the failure
of the play was due solely to your own obstinacy, it seems to me
that your present experiences are affording exactly the discipline
you need."

Section 5. However, there are many ups and downs in the trade of
free-lance writer. The very day after he had received this letter,
there came, in quick succession two bursts of sunlight through the
clouds of Thyrsis' despair. The first was a letter, written in a
quaint script, from a man who explained that he was interested in a
"Free People's Theatre" in one of the cities of Germany. "You will
please to accept my congratulations," he wrote; "I had never known
such a play as yours in America to be written. I should greatly be
pleased to translate the play, so that it might be known in Germany.
Our compensation would have to be little, as you will understand;
but of appreciation I think you may receive much in the Fatherland."

To which Thyrsis sent a cordial response, saying that he would be
glad of any remuneration, and enclosing a copy of the manuscript of
"The Genius". And then--only two days later--came the other event,
a still more notable one; a letter from the publisher who had been
number thirty-seven on the list of "The Hearer of Truth". Thyrsis
had got so discouraged about this work that he now sent it about as
a matter of routine, and without thinking of it at all. Great,
therefore, was his amazement when he opened the letter and read that
this publisher was disposed to undertake it, and would be glad to
see him and talk over terms.

Thyrsis went, speculating on the way as to what strange manner of
being this publisher might be. The solution of the mystery he found
was that the publisher was new at the business, and had entrusted
his "literary department" to a very young man who had enthusiasms.
The young man held his position for only a month or two; but in that
month or two Thyrsis got in his "innings".

The publisher wished to bring the book out that spring. He offered a
ten per cent royalty, and the trembling author summoned the courage
to ask for one hundred dollars advance; when he got it, he was
divided between his delight, and a sneaking regret that he had not
tried for a hundred and fifty!

The very next day came the contracts and the money; Thyrsis
marvelled at the fact that there were people who could sign checks
for a hundred dollars, and apparently not mind it in the least. With
the money he was able to pay all his debts, and also a bill which
Corydon had received from a "specialist" who had been treating her.
This was a new habit that Corydon was developing, as a result of
headaches and backaches and other obscure miseries. These amiable
"specialists" permitted one to run up a bill with them; and so,
whenever Thyrsis made a new "strike", there were always debts to eat
up the greater part of it.

They had now another hope to lure them; new proofs to read, and in
due time, new reviews. But it would be fall before they could expect
more money from the book, and meantime there was still the problem
of the summer. So, as usual, Thyrsis was plotting and planning,
groping about him and trying one desperate scheme after another; his
head was like a busy workshop, from which came every hour new plans,
new expedients, new experiments. And meanwhile, of course, deep down
in his soul there was forming the new work, that some day would
emerge and take possession of him, driving everything else from his
consciousness.

People would repeat to him, over and over, their dreary
formula--"Get a position! Get a position!" And patiently,
unwearyingly, Thyrsis would set himself to explain to them what it
was like to be inspired. It was not perversity upon his part, it was
not conceit; it was no more these than it was laziness. It was
something that was in him--something that he had not put there
himself, something that he could not take out of himself; a thing
that took possession of him, without any intention upon his part,
without any permission; a thing that required him to do certain
acts, and that tore him to pieces if he did not do them. And how
should he be blamed because he could not do as other men--because he
could not take care of himself, nor even of his wife and child?
Because he could not have any rights, because he could not possess
the luxuries of manhood and self-respect? Because, in short, he was
cast out into the gutter for every dog to snarl at and for every
loafer to spurn? Could it be that in this whole civilization, with
its wealth and power, its culture and learning, its sciences and
arts and religions--there was not to be found one single man or
woman who could recognize such a state of affairs, and realize what
it meant?

Section 6. About this time Thyrsis thought of another plan. Perhaps
he might get some one to publish the play in book form--that would
bring him a little money, and possibly also it might help him to
interest some other manager or actor. So he took the manuscript to
his friend Mr. Ardsley, who told him it would not sell, and then
gave him another lecture upon his folly in not having written the
"practical" novel; and then he took it to the publisher for whom
Prof. Osborne acted as reader. So he had another conference with
that representative of authority.

"I'll get him some day," Thyrsis had said to himself, after their
last interview; and he found that he had almost "got" him now. There
was no chance of the play's selling, said the professor, and
therefore no recommending it for publication; but it was indeed a
remarkable piece of work--one might possibly say that it was a
_great_ piece of work.

To which the author responded, "Why can't one say that surely?"

"I'm not quite sure," said the other, "whether your violinist is a
genius, or only thinks he is."

Thyrsis pondered this. "That's rather an important question," he
said.

"Yes," admitted the other.

"There ought to be some way of deciding such a question definitely."

"Yes, there ought to be."

"But there isn't?"

"No--I'm afraid there isn't. We know too little about genius as
yet."

"But, professor," said Thyrsis, "you are a critic--you write books
of criticism. And that's the one question a critic has to answer."

"Yes, I know," said Prof. Osborne.

"And yet, when you face the issue, you give up."

"It has generally taken a long time to decide such a matter," was
the professor's reply.

"Yes, it has," said the other; "and meantime the man is starved
out."

There was a pause. "You have never had any such experience
yourself?" asked Thyrsis. "Of inspiration, I mean."

"No," was the answer. "I couldn't pretend to."

"So your judgments are never from first-hand knowledge?"

The professor hesitated. "I am dealing with you frankly---" he
began.

"I know," said Thyrsis, "and I appreciate that. You understand that
it's an important point for me to get clear. I've felt that all
along about you--I've felt it about so many others who set
themselves against me. And yet I have to bear the burden of their
condemnation--"

"I never condemned you," interposed the other.

"Ah, but you did!" cried Thyrsis. "You told me that I knew less
about writing than anyone in your class! And you spoke as one who
had authority."

"But you had given no indications in the class-room--"

"I know! I know! I tried to get you to see the reason. I wanted to
create literature; and you set me down with a lot of formulas--you
told me to write about 'The Duty of the College Man to Support
Athletics!'"

"It's difficult to see," began Prof. Osborne, "how we could teach
college boys to create literature--"

"At least," said the other, "you need not follow a method which
would make it impossible for one of them to create literature if he
had it in him."

"Does it seem to you as bad as that?" asked the professor, a little
disturbed.

"It truly does," said Thyrsis.

"But what would you say we could do?"

To which the boy replied, "You might try to get your pupils to feel
one deep emotion about life, or to think one worth-while thought;
then they might stand a chance of knowing how it feels to write."

Section 7. Thyrsis was still reading in the papers and magazines of
philanthropists and public-spirited citizens; and he was still
sitting down to write them and explain his plight. He would beg them
to believe that he wanted nothing but a bare living; and he would
send copies of his books or articles or manuscripts, and ask these
people to read them. And about this time an unusual thing
happened--one of these philanthropists answered his letter. He wrote
that he did not agree with Thyrsis' ideas, by any means, but
appreciated the power of his writing, and was certain that he had a
career before him. Whereupon Thyrsis made haste to follow up his
advantage, and wrote another letter--one of the most intense and
impassioned that he ever composed in his life.

He told about the new book he was dreaming. For years he had read
his country's history, and lived in it and thrilled with it.
Especially had he read the Civil War; and now he was planning a book
that should hold the War, and all the meanings of the War, as a
wine-cup holds the rich flavors and aromas of the grape. A titan
struggle it had been, the birth-agony of a nation; and it was a
thing to be contemplated with amazement, that it should have
produced so little in the way of art. Half a dozen poems there were;
but of novels not one above the grade of juvenile fiction.

What Thyrsis was planning was a new form; a series of swift visions,
of glimpses into the very heart of the nation's agony. He described
some of the scenes that were haunting him and driving him. The
winter's night in the ditches in front of Marye's Heights, when the
dead and dying lay piled in windrows, and the soul of a people
sobbed in despair! The night on the field of Gettysburg, when the
young soldier lay wounded, but rapt in his vision, seeing the hosts
of the victorious future defiling upon that hallowed ground! The
ghastly scenes in Andersonville, and the escape, and the long
journey filled with perils; and the siege of Petersburg, and the
surrender; and last of all the ecstasy of the dying man in the
capital, when the grim, war-worn legions were tramping for two days
through the city. Such, wrote Thyrsis, was the book that he wished
to compose, and that was being stifled in him for the lack of two or
three hundred dollars.

Upon the receipt of this letter the philanthropist wrote again,
suggesting that the poet come to see him and talk things over. He
sent the price of a railroad ticket to Boston; and so Thyrsis made
the acquaintance of a new world--one might almost say of a whole new
system of worlds.

For here was the Athens of America, the hub of the universe. In
Boston they worshipped culture, they lived in literature and art and
the transcendental excellences; and by the way of showing that there
was no snobbery in them, they opened the gates of their most august
mansions to this soul-sick poet, and invited him to tea.

Thyrsis got a strange impression among these people, who were living
upon their knees before the shrine of their own literary history.
One was treading here upon holy ground; in these very houses had
dwelt immortal writers--their earthly forms had rested in these
chairs, and their auras yet haunted the dim religious light of these
drawing-rooms. There were old people who had known them in the
flesh, and could tell anecdotes about them--to which one listened in
reverent awe; at every gathering one met people who were writing
biographies and memoirs of them, or editing their letters and
journals, or writing essays and appreciations, criticisms and
commentaries and catalogs and bibliographies. And to be worthy of
the visitations of such hallowed influences, one must guard one's
mind as a temple, a place of silences and serenities, to which no
vulgar things could penetrate; one excluded all the uproar of these
days of undisciplined egotism--above all things else one preserved
an attitude of aloofness from that which presumed to call itself
"literature" in such degenerate times.

To have become acquainted with these high standards was perhaps
worth the rent of a room and the cost of some food and clean
collars. So Thyrsis reflected when, after his week of waiting, he
had his interview with the benevolent philanthropist, who explained
to him, at great length, how charity had the effect of weakening the
springs of character, and destroying those qualities of
self-reliance and independence which were the most precious things
in a man.

Section 8. It was a curious coincidence, one that seemed almost
symbolic--that Thyrsis should have gone from the Brahmins of Boston
to the Socialists of the East Side!

In one of the publishing-houses he visited, Thyrsis had met a young
man who gave him a Socialist magazine to read; as the magazine was
published in the next building, Thyrsis went in and met the editor.
About this time they were crowning a new king in England, and
Thyrsis, who had no use for kings, wrote a sarcastic poem which the
Socialist editor published free of charge. And so the boy discovered
a new way in which he could relieve his feelings.

"I see what you want," he admitted, in his arguments with this
editor; "and it's the same thing as I want--every man with any
sense must see that, in the ultimate outcome, all this capital will
be owned by the public and not by private individuals. But what I
object to is the way you go at it. The industrial process is a
necessary thing; it is drilling and disciplining the workers. They
are not yet fitted for the responsibility of managing the world."

"But," asked the editor, "what's to be the sign when they _are_
fitted?"

"When they have been educated," Thyrsis answered.

To which the editor responded, "Who is to educate them, if we
don't?"

That was an interesting point; and Thyrsis found little by little
that a new light was dawning upon him. He had somehow conceived of
industrial evolution as something vast and intangible and
mechanical, something that went on independent of men, and that
could not be hurried or delayed. What this editor pointed out was
that the process was a definite one, that it went on in the minds of
men, and involved human effort--of which the publishing of Socialist
literature was a most essential part.

"You ought to hear Darrell," said the man; and a few days later he
wrote Thyrsis a note, asking him to go to a hall over on the East
Side that evening.

Thyrsis went, and found a working-men's meeting-room, ill-lighted
and ill-ventilated, with perhaps two hundred people in it. The
chairman introduced the speaker of the evening; and so Thyrsis got
his first glimpse of Henry Darrell.

He was something over forty years of age, slight of build; his face
was pale to the point of ghostliness, and this impression was
heightened by a jet black mustache and beard. One's first thought
was that this man was no stranger to suffering.

He was not a good speaker, in the conventional sense, he fumbled for
words, and repeated himself--and yet from his first sentence Thyrsis
found himself listening spellbound. The voice went through him like
the toll of a bell; never in all his life had he heard a speaker who
put such a burden of anguish into his words--who gave such a sense
of gigantic issues, of age-long destinies hanging in the balance, of
world-embracing hopes and powers struggling to be born. Here was a
prophet who carried in his soul the future of the race; who in the
sudden flashes of his vision, in the swift rushes of his passionate
pleadings, evoked from the deeps of the consciousness forces that
one contemplated with terror--confronted one with martyrdoms and
agonies and despairs.

"Revolution" was his title; he pictured modern civilization as it
presented itself to the proletarian man--a gigantic Moloch, to which
human lives were fed, a monster from whose dominion there was no
deliverance, even in the uttermost parts of the earth. He pictured
accident, disease and death, unemployment and starvation,
child-labor, prostitution, war; he was the voice of the dispossessed
of the earth, the man beneath the machine, ground up body, mind and
soul in this "world-wide mill of economic might". And he showed how
this man dragged down with him all society; how the chain that bound
the slave was fastened also to the master--so that from the poverty
and oppression and degradation of this "downmost man" came all the
ulcers that festered in the social body. He saw the great economic
machine grinding on day and night, the mighty forces rushing to
their culmination. He saw the toiling millions pressed deeper and
deeper into the mire; he saw their blind, convulsive struggles for
deliverance; he saw over them the gigantic slave-driver with his
thousand-lashed whip--the capitalist state, class-owned
class-administered--backed by the capitalist church and the
capitalist press and capitalist "public sentiment". So the hopes of
the people went down in blood and reaction sat enthroned. The
nations, ridden by despotisms, and whirled into senseless wars, ran
the old course of militarism, imperialism, barbarism; and so
civilization slid back yet again into the melting-pot!

Thyrsis had never heard such a speech as this in his life. When it
was over, he went up to the platform where Darrell sat, looking more
exhausted and pain-driven than ever; and in a few hesitating words
he told of his interest, and asked for the speaker's address, that
he might write to him. And that night he posted a letter,
introducing himself as a young writer, who felt impelled to learn
more about Darrell's ideas.

In reply came a note from the other, asking him to dine with him;
and Thyrsis answered accepting.

Then, as chance would have it, he mentioned the circumstance to his
mother. "Darrell!" she cried. "You don't mean Henry Darrell!"

"Yes," said Thyrsis. "Why?"

"And you would meet that man?"

"Why not?" he asked, perplexed.

"Haven't you read anything about him in the papers? That monster!"

"What do you mean?"

"A man who deserted his wife and children, and left them to starve,
and ran away with some rich woman!"

Thyrsis recollected vaguely some sensational headlines, about the
clergyman and college professor who had done the shocking things his
mother spoke of, and was now a social outcast, and a preacher of
anarchy and revolution. He recalled also that there had been a
woman, beautiful and richly-dressed, with Darrell at the meeting.

The boy was not disturbed by all this, for he had long ago made up
his mind that every man had to work out his own sex-problems; in
fact, his first impulse was to admire a man who had had the courage
to face the world upon such an issue. But he was sorry he had
mentioned it to his mother, for she wept bitterly when she found
that he meant to accept the invitation. That was the culmination of
her life's defeat--that her son, who had been designed for a bishop,
should be going to sit at table with Henry Darrell and his paramour!

Section 9. Thyrsis went to the apartment-hotel where Darrell lived,
and was introduced to the beautiful lady as Mrs. Darrell, and they
went down to the dining-room--where he noticed that everyone turned
to stare at them as they entered. It made him feel that he must be
doing something quite desperate; and yet it was not easy to imagine
any wickedness of the man opposite to him--his voice was so kind,
and his smile so gentle, and his whole aspect so appealing. He was
dressed in black, and wore a soft black bow at his throat, which
made still more conspicuous the pallor of his face; Thyrsis had
never met a man he took to more quickly--there was something about
him that was like a little child, calling for affection and
sympathy.

Yet, also, there was the mind of a thinker. He was a man of culture,
in the most vital sense of the word; he had swept the heavens of
thought with a powerful telescope--had travelled, and knew many
languages, and their literatures and arts. He had tested them all by
a strong acid of his own; so that to talk with him was to discover
the feet of clay of one's idols.

He spoke of Dante and Angelo, who were two of his heroes; he told of
great experiences among the latter's titan frescos. He spoke of
Mazzini, whose greatness as a writer the world had yet to
appreciate; he spoke also of Wagner, whose music he valued less than
his critical and polemical work. He told of modern artists both in
Germany and Italy--revolutionary forces of whom Thyrsis had never
heard at all. The day must come, said Darrell, when Americans would
discover the great movements of contemporary thought, and realize
their own provincialness. America thought of itself as "the land of
the free", and that made it hard to teach. It was obvious enough
that there had never been any real freedom in America--only
government by propertied classes. The Revolution had been a
rebellion of country gentlemen and city merchants; as one might know
from the "constitution" they had adopted--one of the greatest
barriers to human progress ever devised. And so with the Civil War,
which to Darrell was one of the deeds of the newly-risen monster of
Capitalism.

They went upstairs again, and Thyrsis found another man seated in
the drawing-room. He was introduced by the name of Paret, and
Thyrsis recognized him as the editor of "The Beacon", a magazine of
which he had chanced upon a copy some time before. It was the first
Socialist publication he had ever seen, and it had repelled him
because its editor had printed his own picture in a conspicuous
place, and also because in his leading editorial he had dealt
flippantly with an eminent reformer and philanthropist for whom
Thyrsis had a profound respect.

But here was the editor himself--not merely his photograph: a little
man, clad in evening dress, very neat and dapper. He had a black
beard, trimmed to a point, and also a sarcastic smile, and he
impressed Thyrsis as a drawing-room edition of Mephistopheles. He
lounged at ease in a big chair, not troubling to talk; save that
every now and then he would punctuate the discussion with some droll
reflection that stuck in one's mind like a burr.

Some one spoke of certain evangelists who were conducting a
temperance campaign among the workers in the steel-mills. Said
Paret: "If I had to live in hell, I'm sure I'd rather be drunk than
sober!" And a little later Thyrsis spoke of a novel he had been
reading, which set out to solve the problem of "capital and labor".
Its solution seemed to be for the handsome young leader of the union
to marry the daughter of the capitalist; and Paret remarked, with
his dry smile, "No doubt if the capitalists and their daughters are
willing, the union-leaders will come to the scratch." Again, Darrell
was telling about the ten years' struggle he had waged to waken the
Church to the great issue of the time; and how at last he had given
up in despair. Paret remarked, "For my part, I never try to talk
economics with preachers. When you talk to a business-man, he
understands a business proposition, and you can get somewhere; but
when you talk with a preacher, and you think he's been understanding
you, you find that all the time he's been thinking what Moses would
have said about it."

There came other guests: a German, hard-fisted,
bullet-headed--editor of an East Side labor-paper. Some one spoke of
working-men losing their votes through being unemployed and cast
adrift; and Thyrsis remembered this man's grim comment, "They lose
their votes, but they don't lose their voices!" There came a young
man, fair as an Antinous, who with his verbal battering-ram shook
the institutions of society so as to frighten even the author of
"The Higher Cannibalism". There came also a poetess, whose work
he had seen in the magazines, and with her a Russian youth who had
come to study the thought of America, and was now going home,
because America had no thought. Thyrsis had a good deal of
patriotism left in him, and might have been angered by this
stripling's contempt; but the stripling spoke with such quiet
assurance, and his contempt was so boundless as to frighten one.
"These people," he said--"they simply do not know what the
intellectual life means!"

When Thyrsis went home that evening, he carried with him new ideas
to ponder; also some of Darrell's pamphlets and speeches--the
product of his ten years' struggle to make the teachings of Christ
of some authority in the Christian Church. Thyrsis sat up late, and
read one of these pamphlets, an indictment of Capitalism from the
point of view of the artist and spiritual creator. It was a
magnificent piece of writing; it came to Thyrsis like an echo out of
his own life. So, before he slept that night he had written a letter
to Darrell, telling of his struggles and his defeats. "I do not ask
you to help _me_" he wrote. "I ask you to read my work, and decide
if that be worth saving. For ashamed as I am to say it, I am at the
end of my resources, and if some help does not come, I do not know
what will become of me."

Thyrsis had now tried all varieties of the great and successful of
the earth--the publishers and editors and authors, the college
professors and clergymen, the statesmen and capitalists and
philanthropists. And now, for the first time, he tried the
Socialists. He trembled when he opened Darrell's reply. Could it be
that this man would be like all the rest?

But no, he was different! "Dear Brother:" he wrote. "I understand
what you have told me, and I appreciate your position. Send me your
manuscripts at once; I leave to-morrow for a lecture-trip, and on my
way I will read everything, and let you hear from me on my return.
In the meantime, I should add that I am helping two Socialist
publications, and a good many individuals too, and that my resources
have been absurdly exaggerated in the public prints. I say this,
that you may not overestimate what I might possibly be able to do."

Section 10. So Thyrsis sent a manuscript of his play, and a copy of
his first novel, and a set of proofs of "The Hearer of Truth"; and
then for a couple of weeks he waited in suspense and dread. He could
not see how a man like Henry Darrell could fail to appreciate his
work; but on the other hand, after so many disappointments and
rebuffs, how could he bring himself to believe that any one would
really give him aid?

At last came a second letter; a letter full of warm-hearted
sympathy--pointing out the faults of immaturity in his work, but
also recognizing its real merits. It closed with this all-important
sentence: "I will do what I can to help you, so come and let us talk
it over."

Thyrsis went; and as they sat in his study, Darrell put his arm
about him, and told him a little of his own career. He had begun
life as a street-waif, a newsboy and bootblack; and once when he was
ill, he had gone to a drug-store for help, and the druggist had
given him a poison by mistake, so that all his life thereafter he
had more sick days than well. He told how, at an early age, he had
gone to a country college to seek an education as a divinity-student;
he had arrived, weary and footsore, and with his last cent had bought
a post-card to let his mother know that he was safe He told how, as
a clergyman and college professor the gospel of the time had come to
him; how he had preached and labored, amid persecution and obloquy,
until he had come to realize that the Church was a dead sepulchre;
and how at last he had thrown everything to the winds, and given
himself to the working-class political movement.

Then Thyrsis, scrupulous as ever, said, "I know nothing about
Socialism. I mean to study it; but I might not come to believe in
it--how can I tell? I would not want you to help me under any
misapprehension."

At which the other smiled gently. "I am working for the truth," he
said.

They talked about Thyrsis and his needs. Presumably, he said, he
would have money from his new book in the fall, but meantime he
wanted to take his family into the country. He could live on thirty
dollars a month; it would be a matter of some two hundred and fifty
dollars. Darrell said he would give him this; and Thyrsis sat there,
powerless to thank him, his voice trembling, and a mist of tears in
his eyes.

He went on to tell his friend of the work that he meant to do.
Darrell had said that to him the Civil War was a crime; but Thyrsis
did not know what he meant by that. "I believe in my country!" he
said. "It has tried for high things--and it will come to them! I
know that it can be thrilled and roused, and made to see the shame
into which it is fallen."

Darrell pressed his arm, and answered, with a smile, "I won't argue
with you about the War; you go ahead and write your book!"

So Thyrsis went home to Corydon, as one who brings a reprieve to a
prisoner under sentence of death. Such a deliverance as it was to
them! And such transports of relief and gratitude as they
experienced! He sang the praises of Darrell, and of the new friends
he had made at Darrell's; also he brought an invitation for Corydon
to come with him to an evening reception the next week. They were
anxious to meet her, he said; and Corydon was anxious to go.

But, alas, this did not work out according to expectations. Thyrsis
discovered now what his wife had meant when she wrote that suffering
and humiliation were breaking down her character. She could not bear
to meet intellectual people, to take part in the competition of
their life. For the most part these were men and women of intense
personalities, absorbed in their own ideas, keenly critical, and not
very merciful to any sort of weakness. And Corydon was morbidly
aware of her own lack of accomplishments, and acutely sensitive as
to what others thought about her. A strange figure she must have
made in any one's drawing-room--with the old dress she had fixed up,
and the lace-collar she had borrowed for the occasion, and the sad
face with the large dark eyes. The talk of the company ran to
politics; and Corydon had nothing to say about politics. She could
only sit in a corner while Thyrsis talked, and suffer agonies of
humiliation.

To make matters worse, there came a literary lion that evening; one
of the few modern writers whose books Corydon knew and loved. But
when they were introduced, he scarcely looked at her; he went on
talking to an East Side poetess whose opinions were fluent and
ready. So Corydon found herself shunted into a corner with an
unknown old lady. It was one of Corydon's peculiarities that she
abhorred old ladies; and this one questioned her about the feeding
of infants and told her that she was ill-equipped for the
responsibilities of motherhood!

On her way home she poured out her bitterness to Thyrsis. "I can see
exactly how it is," she said. "They all think you've married a
pretty face!"

"You haven't given them much chance to think otherwise," he pleaded.

"They don't want any chance," she exclaimed. "They've got it all
settled! You are the rising light, which is to astonish the
world--and I'm your youthful blunder. I stay at home and take care
of the baby, and they all feel sorry for you."

"Do you want them to feel sorry for _you?_" he asked.

To which Corydon answered, "I don't want them to know about me at
all. I want to get away, and stay by myself, and get back my
self-respect." And so it was decided that in a couple of weeks
more--the first of April--they would shake the dust of the city from
their feet. They sent for their tent and other goods, and began
inquiring about a place to camp.

Section 11. A few days more passed; and then, one Sundav morning,
Thyrsis' mother came to him in tears, with a copy of a newspaper
"magazine-supplement" in her hand.

"Look at this!" she cried; and Thyrsis stared.

There was a full-page article, with many illustrations, and a
headline two inches deep--"Henry Darrell to found Free-Love Colony!
Ex-college professor and clergyman buys farm to teach his
doctrines." There was a picture of Darrell, standing upon a ladder
and nailing up an announcement of his defiance to the institution of
marriage; and there were pictures of his wife and child, and of the
farm he had bought, and a long account of the colony which he was
organizing, and in which he meant to preach and practice his ideas
of "free love".

Thyrsis was half dazed. "I don't believe it!" he cried; whereat his
mother wrung her hands.

"Not believe it!" she exclaimed. "Why, the paper even gives the
price he paid for the place!"

So Thyrsis took the article and went to see Henry Darrell again; and
there followed one of the most painful experiences of his life.

He found his friend like a man blasted by a stroke of lightning. His
very physical appearance was altered; his voice shook and his eyes
were wild, and he paced the room, his whole aspect one cry of agony.

He pointed Thyrsis to a lot of clippings that lay upon the
table--the first editorial comments upon this new pronouncement.
There was one from an evening paper, which had close upon a million
circulation, and had devoted its whole editorial page to a scathing
denunciation, in which it was declared that "Prof. Darrell's
morality is that of the higher apes."

"Think of it!" the man cried. "And the thing will go from one end of
the country to the other!"

"But"--gasped Thyrsis, bewildered--"then it is not true?"

"True?" cried Darrell. "True? How can you ask me?"

"But--the colony! What is it to be?"

"There is not going to be any colony. I never dreamed of such a
thing!"

'And haven't you bought any farm?"

"My wife bought a farm, over a year ago--because we wanted to live
in the country!"

"But then," gasped Thyrsis--"how dare they?"

"They dare anything with me!" cried the other. "_Anything!_"

"And have you no redress?"

"Redress? What redress?"

He went on to tell Thyrsis what had happened. He and Mrs. Darrell
had gone down to the farm to see about getting it ready, and a woman
had come, representing that she wished to write a magazine article
about "the country-homes of literary Americans". Upon this pretext
she had secured a photograph of the place, and of Darrell, and of
his wife and child. She had even attempted to secure a photograph of
his wife's aged mother, who lived with her, and who was involved in
the affair because the money belonged to her. Then the woman had
gone away--and a couple of weeks later had come this!