ple thought the world moved slower; at all events, they hoped
it would soon do so. Even the wiser revolutionists postponed their
outbreaks. Success, they believed, was fain to smile upon effort which
had been well postponed.

Men came to look upon a telegram as an insult; the telephone was
preferred, because it allowed one to speak slowly if he chose. Snap-shot
cameras were found only in the garrets. The fifteen minutes' sittings
now in vogue threw upon the plate the color of the eyes, hair, and the
flesh tones of the sitter. Ladies wore hoop skirts.

But these days of passivism at last passed by; earnest thinkers had not
believed in them; they knew they were simply reactionary, and could
not last; and the century was not twenty years old when the world found
itself in a storm of active effort never known in its history before.
Religion, politics, literature, and art were called upon to get up and
shake themselves free of the drowsiness of their years of inaction.

On that great and crowded stage where the thinkers of the world were
busy in creating new parts for themselves without much reference to what
other people were doing in their parts, Roland Clewe was now ready to
start again, with more earnestness and enthusiasm than before, to essay
a character which, if acted as he wished to act it, would give him
exceptional honor and fame, and to the world, perhaps, exceptional
advantage.

CHAPTER II. THE SARDIS WORKS

At the little station of Sardis, in the hill country of New Jersey,
Roland Clewe alighted from the train, and almost instantly his hand
was grasped by an elderly man, plainly and even roughly dressed, who
appeared wonderfully glad to see him. Clewe also was greatly pleased at
the meeting.

"Tell me, Samuel, how goes everything?" said Clewe, as they walked off.
"Have you anything to say that you did not telegraph? How is your wife?"

"She's all right," was the answer. "And there's nothin' happened,
except, night before last, a man tried to look into your lens-house."

"How did he do that?" exclaimed Clewe, suddenly turning upon his
companion. "I am amazed! Did he use a ladder?"

Old Samuel grinned. "He couldn't do that, you know, for the flexible
fence would keep him off. No; he sailed over the place in one of those
air-screw machines, with a fan workin' under the car to keep it up."

"And so he soared up above my glass roof and looked down, I suppose?"

"That's what he did," said Samuel;