th year, to Paris. From there he
had set forth for America, the land of promise.

Arrived in this country, he had made his way, by slow stages, from
New York to Philadelphia, and thence westward, working for a time in
the various glass factories in Pennsylvania. In one romantic village
of this new world he had found his heart's ideal. With her, a simple
American girl of German extraction, he had removed to Youngstown, and
thence to Columbus, each time following a glass manufacturer by the
name of Hammond, whose business prospered and waned by turns.

Gerhardt was an honest man, and he liked to think that others
appreciated his integrity. "William," his employer used to say to him,
"I want you because I can trust you," and this, to him, was more than
silver and gold.

This honesty, like his religious convictions, was wholly due to
inheritance. He had never reasoned about it. Father and grandfather
before him were sturdy German artisans, who had never cheated anybody
out of a dollar, and this honesty of intention came into his veins
undiminished.

His Lutheran proclivities had been strengthened by years of
church-going and the religious observances of home life, In his
father's cottage the influence of the Lutheran minister had been
all-powerful; he had inherited the feeling that the Lutheran Church
was a perfect institution, and that its teachings were of
all-importance when it came to the issue of the future life. His wife,
nominally of the Mennonite faith, was quite willing to accept her
husband's creed. And so his household became a God-fearing one;
wherever they went their first public step was to ally themselves with
the local Lutheran church, and the minister was always a welcome guest
in the Gerhardt home.

Pastor Wundt, the shepherd of the Columbus church, was a sincere
and ardent Christian, but his bigotry and hard-and-fast orthodoxy made
him intolerant. He considered that the members of his flock were
jeopardizing their eternal salvation if they danced, played cards, or
went to theaters, and he did not hesitate to declare vociferously that
hell was yawning for those who disobeyed his injunctions. Drinking,
even temperately, was a sin. Smoking--well, he smoked himself.
Right conduct in marriage, however, and innocence before that state
were absolute essentials of Christian living. Let no one talk of
salvation, he had said, for a daughter who had failed to keep her
chastity unstained, or for the parents wh