?"

"Oh, no, but I have quite a different mental picture of her. You remember
Joan of Arc? Mount her on a charger, hand her a sword of fire and send
her forth to fight for Mary Magdalene. That's my idea."

"You've borrowed that from the headline writers," the mill-owner said.

"Not at all. I know the type. A thoughtful young girl, healthy,
cultivated and, by the modern miracle, taught how to think. She studies
vice conditions in Chicago at first hand and what she sees turns her into
a crusader. This girl has spirit. Brought face to face with a great evil,
moved by the appeal of helpless womanhood, she throws aside her veneer of
false education."

"Unsexed!"

"Yes, if you would say that the crisis in her life unsexed Portia. Or the
crisis in France's history unsexed Charlotte Corday."

"You're fond of historical allusions," chided the practical man. "Always
the literary man, always the dreamer. This girl is a disturber. She'll
unsettle business."

"Ah, there you are. 'Unsettles business.' Did it ever strike you business
men that you take yourselves too damn seriously? Any movement, any
agitation that 'unsettles business' is ipse facto wrong. You business men
have had a hand in the martyring of most of the saints and all of the
reformers since time began. And, invariably, you are wrong. Why, you're
wrong even about yourselves. You firmly believe that the foundations of
the country rest upon you. As a matter of fact, not one per cent of you
are producers. You're middlemen, profit shavers, parasites."

"My dear fellow," asked his friend, "where would you be if business
men--publishers--didn't buy your wares?"

"Ha," answered the writer, "and where would the publishers be if I and
others didn't produce the wares to market? It won't do. The reason the
newspapers and magazines of this country are so bad is because most of
the publishers are not newspaper men and magazine writers, but merely
business men."

"Well, I suppose your Joan of Arc will have to have her fling. Then life
will swing back to its same old channels and we'll forget her."

"Yes, she will have her fling and perhaps we'll forget her, but life will
not swing back to the same old channel. She'll make a new channel,
forgotten though she may be, and it will be a better channel."

* * * * *

Captain Shammer of the Eighth police district read Mary Randall's open
letter through slowly and carefully. When he h