ndowed with a peculiar brain and a certain amount of
talent, and he had inherited a certain amount of wealth which he now
scarcely believed he deserved, only luck had favored him. But he could
not see that any one else might be said to deserve this wealth any
more than himself, seeing that his use of it was as conservative and
constructive and practical as the next one's. He might have been born
poor, in which case he would have been as well satisfied as the next
one--not more so. Why should he complain, why worry, why
speculate?--the world was going steadily forward of its own
volition, whether he would or no. Truly it was. And was there any need
for him to disturb himself about it? There was not. He fancied at
times that it might as well never have been started at all. "The one
divine, far-off event" of the poet did not appeal to him as having any
basis in fact. Mrs. Lester Kane was of very much the same opinion.

Jennie, living on the South Side with her adopted child, Rose
Perpetua, was of no fixed conclusion as to the meaning of life. She
had not the incisive reasoning capacity of either Mr. or Mrs. Lester
Kane. She had seen a great deal, suffered a great deal, and had read
some in a desultory way. Her mind had never grasped the nature and
character of specialized knowledge. History, physics, chemistry,
botany, geology, and sociology were not fixed departments in her brain
as they were in Lester's and Letty's. Instead there was the feeling
that the world moved in some strange, unstable way. Apparently no one
knew clearly what it was all about. People were born and died. Some
believed that the world had been made six thousand years before; some
that it was millions of years old. Was it all blind chance, or was
there some guiding intelligence--a God? Almost in spite of
herself she felt there must be something--a higher power which
produced all the beautiful things--the flowers, the stars, the
trees, the grass. Nature was so beautiful! If at times life seemed
cruel, yet this beauty still persisted. The thought comforted her; she
fed upon it in her hours of secret loneliness.

It has been said that Jennie was naturally of an industrious turn.
She liked to be employed, though she thought constantly as she worked.
She was of matronly proportions in these days--not disagreeably
large, but full bodied, shapely, and smooth-faced in spite of her
cares. Her eyes were gray and appealing. Her hair was still of a rich
brown, b