supine, trying not to clench a muscle, seeking to force his
surrender to inanition; but he could not get sleep though he implored
his soul for it, prayed God for it.

At length he ceased to try to compel slumber. He lay musing. It is a
strange thing to lie musing in the dark. His soul seemed to tug and
waver outside his body as he had seen an elephant chained by one leg in
a circus tent lean far away from its shackles, and sway and put its
trunk forth gropingly. His soul seemed to be under his forehead, pushing
at it as against a door. He felt that if he had a larger, freer forehead
he would have more soul and more room for his mind to work.

Then the great fear came over him again. In these wakeful moods he
suffered ecstasies of fright.

He was appalled with life. He felt helpless, bodyless, doomed.

On his office wall hung a calendar with a colored picture showing
fishermen in a little boat in a fog looking up to see a great Atlantic
liner just about to run them down. So the universe loomed over him now,
rushed down to crush him. The other people of the world were asleep in
their places; his creditors, his rivals were resting, gaining strength
to overwhelm him on the morrow, and he must face them unrefreshed.

He dreamed forward through crisis after crisis, through bankruptcy,
disgrace, and mortal illness. He thought of his family, the children
asleep in their beds under the roof that he must uphold like an Atlas.
Poor little demanding, demanding things! What would become of them when
their father broke down and was turned out of his factory and out of his
home? How they would hamper him, cling to him, cry out to him not to let
them starve, not to let them go cold or barefoot, not to turn them
adrift.

Yet they did not understand him. They loved their mother infinitely
more. She watched over them, played with them, cuddled and kissed them,
while he had to leave the house before they were up, and came home at
night too fagged to play their games or endure their noise. And if they
were to be punished, she used him as a threat, and saved them up for him
to torment and denounce.

They loved her and were afraid of him. Yet what had she done for them?
She had conceived them, borne them, nourished them for a year at most.
Thereafter their food, their shelter, their clothes, their education,
their whole prosperity must come from their father. Yet the very
necessities of the struggle for their welfare kept him from givi