get hold of it! They're
all ambitious--if stirred!"

He waited, asking: "And what else?"

"Nothing else."

"But you didn't say anything nice about Dale!"

She laughed. "I thought you knew about Dale--and me; for I'm of the
mountains!"

"You didn't belong to those people," he murmured. "You're a spirit who
lived in a deep spring, and you just floated down with the brook. I
know, because I've dreamed about you. And I know, too," he shook off the
spell, "a little something about stirring the ambition of _real_ people
up there. I've seen it tried in a mining camp where a railroad has been
running for years! I've seen a fair and square company build model
cottages, and in every way try to improve conditions. It put in baths,
and the tubs were used for vegetable bins. It built a reading room, and
the walls were covered with charcoal pictures. Two men used their little
front porches for firewood, rather than pick up all they wanted a
hundred yards away. One winter coal took a jump. The mine had a bonanza
chance, and the men who had been making their two and a half dollars a
day, or thereabouts, could with the same hours' work pull down twice
that much. Did they? I'll tell you what they did: they laughed at the
superintendent and worked half time; they sat about the store and
whittled, saying that two and a half was all they needed. But they
forgot this quick enough when the union afterwards went in and told them
they ought to get twenty cents more! You'd have thought then that they'd
been on the verge of starvation for years, and the harrowing tales which
went forth about their 'wretched conditions' would have made you
laugh--had you known the facts. The union had photographs taken of the
two cottages without front porches, and sent them broadcast so the world
could see how capital trod upon its hire. Ambition? They don't know the
word deeper than its two first letters! And you've got to be ready for
many a disappointment here, too--let me tell you that!"

She was looking at him earnestly, and in a few moments said: "I agree
with everything you say. I grant it all, every bit. But, Brent,
consider! A mother tells her little boy to wash his face, to read his
primer, and he doesn't. And the next day she tells him, and he doesn't.
And so on, for days and days, she tells and tells. It seems utterly
hopeless, but all the time she is persisting, and gradually bringing him
nearer to a sense of obligation. After ten or twelve y