of this
agitation which is serving only to increase the general
discomfort. And the agitator is trampled down, disappears,
perhaps silently, perhaps with groan or shriek. Continue to
look at this crowd, so pitiful, so terrible, such a melancholy
waste of incalculable power--continue to observe and you may
chance upon an example of the third type. You are likely at
first to confuse the third type with the second, for they seem
to be much alike. Here and there, of the resentful
strugglers, will be one whose resentment is intelligent. He
struggles, but it is not aimless struggle. He has seen or
suspected in a definite direction a point where he would be
more or less free, perhaps entirely free. He realizes how he
is hemmed in, realizes how difficult, how dangerous, will be
his endeavor to get to that point. And he proceeds to try to
minimize or overcome the difficulties, the dangers. He
struggles now gently, now earnestly, now violently--but always
toward his fixed objective. He is driven back, to one side,
is almost overwhelmed. He causes commotions that threaten to
engulf him, and must pause or retreat until they have calmed.
You may have to watch him long before you discover that, where
other strugglers have been aimless, he aims and resolves. And
little by little he gains, makes progress toward his goal--and
once in a long while one such reaches that goal. It is
triumph, success.
Susan, young, inexperienced, dazed; now too despondent, now
too hopeful; now too gentle and again too infuriated--Susan
had been alternating between inertia and purposeless struggle.
Brent had given her the thing she lacked--had given her a
definite, concrete, tangible purpose. He had shown her the
place where, if she should arrive, she might be free of that
hideous slavery of the miserable mass; and he had inspired her
with the hope that she could reach it.
And that was the Susan Lenox who came back to the little room
in Delancey Street at half-past five.
Curiously, while she was thinking much about Brent, she was
thinking even more about Burlingham--about their long talks on
the show boat and in their wanderings in Louisville and
Cincinnati. His philosophy, his teachings--the wisdom he had,
but was unable to apply--began to come back to her. It was
not strange that she should remember it, for she had admired
him intensely and had listened to his every word, and she was
then at the time when the memory takes its cle
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