n of
hatred of the man who had done him the wrong had been always in his
soul. The life he had led had been not one of active and voluntary
preying upon his fellow-men; it had been only the life of one who
must have the sweets of existence for himself and those he loved, and
he had gotten them, even if the flowers and the fruit hung over the
garden-walls of others. Now it suddenly seemed to him that he could
no longer do it, as he had done, even if the owners of the fruit and
flowers should be still unawares. Curiously enough, the old Pilgrim's
Progress which he had read as a child was very forcibly in his mind
in these days. He remembered the child that ate the fruit that hung
over the wall, and how the gripes, in consequence, seized him.
Something very like the conviction of sin was over the man, or,
rather, a complete consciousness of himself and his deeds, which is,
maybe, after all, the true meaning of the term. It was true that the
self-knowledge had seemed to come, perforce, because it was
temporarily out of his power to transgress farther; in other words,
because he was completely found out; but all the same, the knowledge
was there. He saw himself just as he was, had been--a great man
goaded on always by the small, never-ceasing prick of hatred, with
the sense of injury always stinging his soul, living as he chose,
having all that he could procure, utterly careless whether at the
expense and suffering of others or not. Now, for the first time, he
began to adjust himself in the place of others, and the adjusting
produced torment from the realization of their miseries, and worse
torment from realization of his own contemptibility. It really seemed
as if all positions which might have been in some keeping with the
man and his antecedents were absolutely out of his reach. Not a night
but he read the advertising columns until he was blind and dizzy.
Every morning he went to New York and hunted. The first morning he
had taken the train, he had actually to assure some of his watchful
creditors that he was going to return. Then all day he wandered about
the streets, making one of long lines of applicants for the vacant
positions. One morning he found himself in the line with William
Allbright. He recognized unmistakably the meek, bent back of the old
clerk three ahead of him in the line. A book-keeper had been
advertised for in a large wholesale house, and there were perhaps
forty applicants all awaiting their turn. Hi