bjects without, than the
failure of that noble educational system administered by the Grinders'
Company. He had seen upon the man's rough cap a piece of new crape, and
he had assured himself, from his manner and his answers, that he wore it
for his son.

Sol from high to low, at home or abroad, from Florence in his great
house to the coarse churl who was feeding the fire then smoking before
them, everyone set up some claim or other to a share in his dead boy,
and was a bidder against him! Could he ever forget how that woman had
wept over his pillow, and called him her own child! or how he, waking
from his sleep, had asked for her, and had raised himself in his bed and
brightened when she came in!

To think of this presumptuous raker among coals and ashes going on
before there, with his sign of mourning! To think that he dared
to enter, even by a common show like that, into the trial and
disappointment of a proud gentleman's secret heart! To think that
this lost child, who was to have divided with him his riches, and his
projects, and his power, and allied with whom he was to have shut out
all the world as with a double door of gold, should have let in such a
herd to insult him with their knowledge of his defeated hopes, and their
boasts of claiming community of feeling with himself, so far removed:
if not of having crept into the place wherein he would have lorded it,
alone!

He found no pleasure or relief in the journey. Tortured by these
thoughts he carried monotony with him, through the rushing landscape,
and hurried headlong, not through a rich and varied country, but a
wilderness of blighted plans and gnawing jealousies. The very speed at
which the train was whirled along, mocked the swift course of the young
life that had been borne away so steadily and so inexorably to its
foredoomed end. The power that forced itself upon its iron way--its
own--defiant of all paths and roads, piercing through the heart of
every obstacle, and dragging living creatures of all classes, ages, and
degrees behind it, was a type of the triumphant monster, Death.

Away, with a shriek, and a roar, and a rattle, from the town, burrowing
among the dwellings of men and making the streets hum, flashing out into
the meadows for a moment, mining in through the damp earth, booming
on in darkness and heavy air, bursting out again into the sunny day so
bright and wide; away, with a shriek, and a roar, and a rattle, through
the fields, through