your attention first to a man of whom you have probably
never heard. He is dead now--he threw himself into the river this
summer, with a curse on his lips--I am afraid--a curse against you. A
few years ago he lived happily with his wife and child in a little house
on the Grade Suburban, and he had several thousand dollars as a result
of careful saving and systematic self-denial.

"Perhaps you have never thought of the responsibilities of a great name.
This man, like thousands of others in the city, idealized you. He looked
up to you as the soul of honour, as a self-made man who by his own
unaided efforts--as you yourself have just pointed out--rose from a
poor boy to a position of power and trust in the community. He saw you a
prominent layman in the Church of God. He was dazzled by the
brilliancy of your success, inspired by a civilization which--gave such
opportunities. He recognized that he himself had not the brains for
such an achievement,--his hope and love and ambition were centred in his
boy."

At the word Eldon Parr's glance was suddenly dulled by pain. He
tightened his lips.

"That boy was then of a happy, merry disposition, so the mother says,
and every summer night as she cooked supper she used to hear him
laughing as he romped in the yard with his father. When I first saw him
this summer, it was two days before his father committed suicide. The
child was lying, stifled with the heat, in the back room of one of those
desolate lodging houses in Dalton Street, and his little body had almost
wasted away.

"While I was there the father came in, and when he saw me he was filled
with fury. He despised the Church, and St. John's above all churches,
because you were of it; because you who had given so generously to
it had wrecked his life. You had shattered his faith in humanity,
his ideal. From a normal, contented man he had deteriorated into a
monomaniac whom no one would hire, a physical and mental wreck who
needed care and nursing. He said he hoped the boy would die.

"And what had happened? The man had bought, with all the money he had
in the world, Consolidated Tractions. He had bought it solely because
of his admiration for your ability, his faith in your name. It was
inconceivable to him that a man of your standing, a public benefactor,
a supporter of church and charities, would permit your name to be
connected with any enterprise that was not sound and just. Thousands
like Garvin lost all they had, w