ken of a
stormy morrow. Through the walled banks, the river rushes turbulently,
swollen by recent rains; its waters tinged by the dyes and other refuse
from the city above.

On the further bank, the groups of breakers and foundries loom up as
vague shadow creations. From fifty chimney mouths thick black smoke
curls unceasingly; now soaring to a considerable height, now driven down
to earth by fitful gusts of wind. In their sinuous course these
smoke-clouds resemble the genii of fable, who spread over the earth
carrying death and devastation.

In sharp contrast to this picture is the Avenue of Opulence on the side
of the river which boasts of the Esplanade. Here is a line of fifty
palatial residences; the homes of the owners of a hundred mines and
factories and the task-masters of fifty thousand men, their wives and
their progeny.

Clustered about the breakers and furnaces are the squalid huts and
ramshackle cottages of the operatives; there too, a little removed from
the river are the caves in which the Huns and Scandinavians dwell, even
as their prehistoric ancestors dwelt before the light of civilization
dawned.

Nero thrumming his violin from the vantage point of the crowning hill of
Rome, had no such portraiture of the degradation of humanity as that
which the Magnates nightly view from their balconies. A stranger would
be struck with surprise that the thousands should be huddled in dens
that wild animals would find uninhabitable, while the sons of greed and
avarice flaunt their trappings of mammon from the hilltops.

This is the arena in which is to be enacted a scene of this great drama.
The actors, the audience are gathering.

Mingled sounds of strange nature are on the air. The murmur always
present where multitudes are assembled runs as an undertone; the sharp
notes of frightened women and terrified children rise as the tones of an
oratorio; steady, full, vibrant are the sounds of the men's voices.

On the countenances of the men can be read the exultation of their
hearts, that at least one of their tyrants has encountered his Nemesis.
Faces here and there are wreathed in smiles, as though their possessors
were hastening to a fete. Some are grave, for the thought of the
retribution that the Magnates will demand, and which they knew so well
how to secure, is enough to bring a pallor to the cheek. There are men
in the eddying thousands who have felt the hot lead of Latimer and
Hazleton burn into their ba