reamed dreams and saw
visions at his own risk. While he dreamed of the brotherhood of man,
his classmate with the corporation practice distanced him in the
pursuit of position. While he led himself through the valley of the
shadow of temptation, and feared no evil because of the Madonna vision
in his soul, even the Madonnas preferred Lancelot and Tristram to
Galahad. It wasn't an easy world for a man who wanted to keep faith
with himself. It was a pinchbeck world, of pretence and pull,--that
world that lies drowned out there. And yet I believe it was infinitely
better than the lost Atlantis, better than the deluged planet of Noah,
nobler and finer than the best civilization of which we have any
trace. I never despaired of it, and yet as I grew older I wondered if
I was not foolish and mistaken in daring to hope and to dream."

"I know," she said again. "I think I did despair, for it seemed to me
a dreadful, a terrible world. I used to wonder how conscientious men
and women could bring other human beings into it, to be and to suffer
and to faint in the frantic struggle for the unrealities that made us
miserable or happy. Consider how paltry they were. If we built a new
house, we were infinitely more concerned to see that the contractor
used pressed brick than we were to see that the construction of our
own characters was true. When we grew wealthy we moved into houses of
more stories; but how often did we say: 'Build thee more stately
mansions, O my soul'? I had as clean and strong a heritage as you, but
a different one. It is no use to comfort oneself with nice little
aphorisms about the needle's eye, and saws about filthy lucre, and
telling God's estimate of money from the kind of people He gives it
to; I tell you biting poverty is a terrible thing, an unspeakable
thing. It is a misfortune for a child to grow up under a sense of
injustice. I used to have times of revolt against it all, when I hated
with the blind, ferocious hate of a child, and I saw what David never
saw,--the righteous forsaken, and his seed begging, not bread, but a
chance to earn his bread, and begging for it without being able to
make just terms. I saw my home sold under the sheriff's hammer, and my
parents struggle all their lives because of the lack of money, when
they had everything else, nobility, character, truth, and education.
My girlhood was a long series of going-withouts. Finally I married a
man who promised me everything. Ah, well, when