aps to find this woman on his own plane. For purposes of
temporary happiness he might take her from anywhere, leaving marriage,
of course, out of the question. He had no idea of making anything like
a serious proposal to a servant-girl. But Jennie was different. He had
never seen a servant quite like her. And she was lady-like and lovely
without appearing to know it. Why, this girl was a rare flower. Why
shouldn't he try to seize her? Let us be just to Lester Kane; let us
try to understand him and his position. Not every mind is to be
estimated by the weight of a single folly; not every personality is to
be judged by the drag of a single passion. We live in an age in which
the impact of materialized forces is well-nigh irresistible; the
spiritual nature is overwhelmed by the shock. The tremendous and
complicated development of our material civilization, the
multiplicity, and variety of our social forms, the depth, subtlety,
and sophistry of our imaginative impressions, gathered, remultiplied,
and disseminated by such agencies as the railroad, the express and the
post-office, the telephone, the telegraph, the newspaper, and, in
short, the whole machinery of social intercourse--these elements
of existence combine to produce what may be termed a kaleidoscopic
glitter, a dazzling and confusing phantasmagoria of life that wearies
and stultifies the mental and moral nature. It induces a sort of
intellectual fatigue through which we see the ranks of the victims of
insomnia, melancholia, and insanity constantly recruited. Our modern
brain-pan does not seem capable as yet of receiving, sorting, and
storing the vast army of facts and impressions which present
themselves daily. The white light of publicity is too white. We are
weighed upon by too many things. It is as if the wisdom of the
infinite were struggling to beat itself into finite and cup-big
minds.

Lester Kane was the natural product of these untoward conditions.
His was a naturally observing mind, Rabelaisian in its strength and
tendencies, but confused by the multiplicity of things, the vastness
of the panorama of life, the glitter of its details, the unsubstantial
nature of its forms, the uncertainty of their justification. Born a
Catholic, he was no longer a believer in the divine inspiration of
Catholicism; raised a member of the social elect, he had ceased to
accept the fetish that birth and station presuppose any innate
superiority; brought up as the heir to a c