It becomes us to watch carefully against crowding society to
that point of compression where the mass of men have nothing to
lose and little to live for, with the balance rather in favor
of dying. Then the last argument, the bayonet, fails against a
people whom it is of no use to kill. They are the innumerable
majority. A citizen soldiery sickens at the work of slaughter,
and like the soldiers of France in the Revolution, will walk
over to the mob, guns and all. Then, what are you going to do?
How far are our great cities from that condition? Go through
the “slums” and see. Look at the wan faces leaning from high
windows for a breath of what is not the air of heaven. See the
pallid little children in broken rocking-chairs sitting out
on the balconies of the fire-escapes, or the five-year-old
holding the two-year-old from falling out as they lean over the
window-sill. Coming on the elevated road through such a scene
one sultry evening lately, the writer saw a woman sitting near a
window with a look of unutterable sadness; and, while we looked,
a stout man in shirt sleeves came across the room, stooped down
and kissed her. She looked up at him pitifully but despairingly,
shook her head, and began wiping away the tears. Then the swift
train whirled us from where hearts were breaking. It is ill for
such men to reach the point where they know that no toil, no
frugality, no self-denial can make things any better to-morrow,
or next year, or ten years hence--that no work of arm or brain
can lift his face from the grindstone, and that this--or
worse--is all the inheritance he can leave his children. Then
the sight of a carriage with gold-caparisoned horses, a flash
of a diamond, or the sweep of a silk dress will make that man
clench his fist. Thousands of such will pull down a Bastile with
their bare hands. And in the midst of all this, social leaders
withdraw into a little clique and parade and proclaim their
fewness--they are “the Four Hundred.”--J. C. FERNALD,
_The Statesman_.
(2776)
=Reward for Service=--See COURAGE, MORAL.