aring their sagas of rapine and slaughter;
the conquerors came to Europe with spear and sword and torch and left
the outlines of the map, the boundaries of states. Luther married his
nun, and set Christendom to fighting over it for a hundred years, but he
left a free conscience. Cromwell thrust his pikes into the noble heads
of England, snapped his fingers at law, and left civil liberty.
Organized murder reached its sublimity in the war that Lincoln waged,
and in that murdering and pillage true romance came to mankind in its
flower. Murder for the moment in these piping times has become impolite.
But true romance is here. Our heroes rob and plunder, and build cities,
and swing gayly around the curves of the railroads they have stolen, and
swagger through the cities they have levied upon the people to build. Do
we care to-day whether Charlemagne murdered his enemies with a sword or
an axe; do we ask if King Arthur used painless assassination or burned
his foes at the stake? Who cares to know that Caesar was a rake, and that
William the Conqueror was a robber? They did their work and did it well,
and are snugly sitting on their monuments where no moralist can reach
them. So those searching for true romance to-day, who regard the
decalogue as mere persiflage, and the moral code as a thing of archaic
interest, will get their day's work done and strut into posterity in
bronze and marble. They will cheat and rob and oppress and grind the
faces off the poor, and do their work and follow their visions, and live
the romance in their hearts. To-morrow we will take their work,
disinfect it, and dedicate it to God's uses."

There was more of it--four thousand words more, to be exact, and when
General Ward went home that night he prayed his Unitarian God to
forgive John Barclay for his blasphemy. And for years the general
shuddered when his memory brought back the picture of the little man,
with his hard tanned face, his glaring green eyes, his brazen voice
trumpeting the doctrine of materialism to the people.

"John," said the general, the next day, as he sat in the mill, going
over the plans of the college buildings with Barclay, who was chairman
of the board of directors, "John, why are you so crass, so gross a
materialist? You have enough money--why don't you stop getting it and
do something with it worth while?"

"Because, General, I'm not making money--that's only an incident of
my day's work. I'm organizing the grain indust