"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.

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.

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."

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.