to take as much from society in passing
for coal as it could, and being without soul or conscience or feeling of
any kind, the share of stock put the automatic screws on Dick--as their
numbers corresponded. And for squeezing the sweat out of him the share
was accounted unusually fit, while poor Dick--why he was merely a number
on the books and was called a unit of labor. Then there was Daniel
Sands. He had spread his web all over the town. It ran in the pipes
under ground that brought water and gas, and the wires above ground,
that brought light and power and communication. The web found its way
into the earth--through deep cuts in the earth, worming along caverns
where it held men at work; then the web ran into foul dens where the
toilers were robbed of their health and strength and happiness and even
of the money the toilers toiled for, and the web brought it all back
slimey and stinking from unclean hands into the place where the spider
sat spinning. And there was his son and daughter; Mr. Sands had married
at least four estimable ladies with the plausible excuse that he was
doing it only to give his children a home. Mr. Sands had given his son a
home, to be sure; but his son had not taken a conscience from the
home--for who was there at home to give it? Not the estimable ladies who
had married Mr. Sands, for they had none or they would have been
somewhere else, to be sure; not Mr. Sands himself, for he was busy with
his web, and conscience rips such webs as his endways, and Daniel would
have none of that. And the servants who had reared the youth had no
conscience to give him; for it was made definite and certain in that
home that they were paid for what they did, so they did what they were
paid for, and bestowing consciences upon young gentlemen is no part of
the duty of the "help" in a home like that.

As for his daughter, Anne, again one of God's miracles was wrought.
There she was growing in the dead atmosphere of that home--where she had
known two mothers before she was ten and she saw with a child's shrewd
eyes that another was coming. Yet in some subsoil of the life about her
the roots of her life were finding a moral sense. Her hazel eyes were
questioning so curiously the old man who fathered her that he felt
uncomfortable when she was near him. Yet for all the money he had won
and all that money had made him, he was reckoned among the fit. Then
there was the fit Mr. Van Dorn and the fit Mr. Calvin. Mr. Calvi