ted and yet never diminishing. Workmen, carrying out the
pails of honest labor, carried them loaded down with the literature it
was their only business to circulate.

Thus, openly, and yet with infinite caution, was spread the doctrine
of no God; of no government, and of no church; of the confiscation of
private property; of strikes and unrest; of revolution, rape, arson and
pillage.

And around this social cancer the city worked and played. Its theatres
were crowded, its expensive shops, its hotels. Two classes of people
were spending money prodigally; women with shawls over their heads,
women who in all their peasant lives had never owned a hat, drove in
automobiles to order their winter supply of coal, and vast amounts of
liquors were being bought by the foreign element against the approaching
prohibition law, and stored in untidy cellars.

On the other hand, the social life of the city was gay with reaction
from war. The newspapers were filled with the summer plans of the
wealthy, and with predictions of lavish entertaining in the fall. Among
the list of debutantes Lily's name always appeared.

And, in between the upper and the nether millstone, were being ground
the professional and salaried men with families, the women clerks, the
vast army who asked nothing but the right to work and live. They went
through their days doggedly, with little anxious lines around their
eyes, suffering a thousand small deprivations, bewildered, tortured with
apprehension of to-morrow, and yet patiently believing that, as things
could not be worse, they must soon commence to improve.

"It's bound to clear up soon," said Joe Wilkinson over the back fence
one night late in June, to Willy Cameron. Joe supported a large family
of younger brothers and sisters in the house next door, and was employed
in a department store. "I figure it this way--both sides need each
other, don't they? Something like marriage, you know. It'll all be over
in six months. Only I'm thanking heaven just now it's summer, because
our kids are hell on shoes."

"I hope so," said Willy Cameron. "What are you doing over there,
anyhow?"

"Wait and see," said Joe, cryptically. "If you think you're going to be
the only Central Park in this vicinity you've got to think again." He
hesitated and glanced around, but the small Wilkinsons were searching
for worms in the overturned garden mold. "How's Edith?" he asked.

"She's all right, Joe."

"Seeing anybody yet?"