A raw wind from the sea swept against the mammoth building of the
_New York Monthly Journal_. The editor of that famous publication
crossed to the rattling window and looked at Broadway, far beneath. A
few drops of rain mingled with the dust that eddied about in little
whirlpools of wind.
In his hand he held a long letter from Craighouse, and, after a pause,
he re-read the ending.
... "And so I crept downstairs in the early morning and built a fire of
my articles, in a grate. I am sorry to have failed you; but, if one
would ridicule England, first let him go to the sea and watch the men
that go out in ships--and the men that never come back from the sea. If
he would scoff at the simple folk of England, first let him stop at a
farm I saw, where an old man of seventy is toiling in the fields, that
the King's horses and men may be fed; while his four sons sleep in
France. If he would laugh at the old families of England, let him come
to the old homes where every son went without a murmur, and where, too
often, the last one fell beside his brothers, because England had
called for men.
"If he would make the mothers of England a study for satire, first he
should mock the woman at the foot of the Cross, for her love and their
love, her grief and their grief, are one."
Like gnomes, the people on Broadway hurried on in an endless, diverging
torrent of humanity.